


The Shape of Desire is Your Name

by dracoismytrashson (JGogoboots)



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blow Jobs, Come Eating, Coming of Age, Draco Malfoy Speaks French, First Love, First Time, Food Sex, I swear I made it incredibly touching and romantic, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Obsessive Behavior, POV Draco Malfoy, Pining, Pining Draco Malfoy, Rimming, Self-Discovery, but this is still very much HP in terms of magic, it's the peach scene, like really saddle up for a seriously dramatic pining Draco here folks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-06-15
Packaged: 2020-01-04 06:28:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 44,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18338039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JGogoboots/pseuds/dracoismytrashson
Summary: In those days, I often felt like I wanted to burn the world or I wanted it to burn me, scorch me with it’s mysteries and mundanities until I was a blackened strip of a thing, rapturously spent and reshaped into something far more interesting than I’d ever been. I was waiting for something to happen to me, some indelible experience to come along and justify this dangerous searing feeling inside me, this dormant volcano that felt at turns exciting and oh so volatile. I was certain Harry Potter was that thing. The match to my tinder.In the luscious beauty of Italian summer, Harry Potter comes to stay with the Malfoys for six weeks.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the wonderful mods for bringing this fest to life. I was chomping at the bit to participate. 
> 
> A huge thank you to all who helped me with this fic: G for being an alpha and cheerleader, S and R for beta-ing, E for encouraging me when I feared I wouldn't finish this, and all the people who sprinted with me in Discord. You're all invaluable to me.
> 
> I hope this canon divergent story makes you wonder about the "what if"s of the universe, the way decisions both small and large can change the course of everything, can change who we become. I hope it makes you think about whether or not we meet the same people in different iterations of the universe over and over again, falling for each other anew, the same themes and threads cropping up no matter where we are. I hope it makes you think about what desire means, and I hope you love it as much as I loved writing it.
> 
> Also, Draco is 18 and Harry is 22 in this story. That's clear early on in the story, but I wanted to make a note of it here too since this is a CMBYN inspired fic. :)
> 
> ***
> 
> Posting the usual disclaimer here that I do not own the characters from Harry Potter or CMBYN and am not profiting off them. Wanted to make sure to note this since I essentially rewrote the entire film, and therefore used a lot of dialogue from it throughout this piece. :)
> 
> I hope André Aciman and Luca Guadagnino, whom I dearly love for bringing CMBYN to life, would see this as an homage in a similar way to Luca’s intentions to continue Elio and Oliver’s story in two more films, writing a new ending for our beloved tragic pair. All scene descriptions/paragraphs are my own, but some dialogue portions are direct quotes lifted from James Ivory’s script for the film.
> 
> I was insatiably curious about how this story would play out when adapted to Draco and Harry and the elements of magic so I just went where that curiosity took me. It’s not my intention to steal content but rather to simply have fun with a creative writing exercise in re-imagining a story I love and will not profit from in any way.

The first time I saw him, he was hopping out of a car on our front drive, striding out with self-assurance, attuned to his own body in that athlete’s way of his, confidence in the precision of every footfall.

He was so unlike me.

In those days, the sun-soaked languor of teenage summer, my gait was foreign to me. My lanky, awkward limbs were strangers over whom I seemed to possess no dominion. They betrayed me at every turn. I fumbled and jittered my way through movement, something more akin to adolescent seizure than his balletic grace. While I could only mimic composure, he embodied it. While I could only conjecture about who I was, he seemed to point at his own identity with no hesitance.

We don’t know where we belong when we’re young. Mental anguish is made manifest in our unfinished hips, our pock-marked skin, and our borrowed, muddled opinions we utter like questions, gauging our own sincerity from the reactions of others, always looking for someone to save us from our floundering and tell us who we are.

I was knobby-kneed and diminutive, my skin stretched too tight across my bones. It didn’t fit. I wanted to scratch it away to find something else underneath. Something strong and fully formed and masculine. Something that didn’t need anyone’s help to define it. Something like Harry Potter.

 

***

 

_Somewhere in Northern Italy, Summer 2003_

It was a warm, luscious day. Our family had been summering on the Italian villa ever since my father inherited it. It was the one bright spot my grandfather had brought to his life. The property was luxurious, a sprawling paradise that contained acres of apricot and peach orchards. The house was a 16th century beauty, a sturdy stone portico leading into a spacious entryway with a mosaic floor, the black double doors frequently left open to usher in the breeze.

My parents discouraged the use of magic to correct life’s marginal inconveniences, citing it as a weakness for our kind. They contended that I would be better off learning to solve these little problems without resorting to spellwork. I, of course, rejected these character building exercises with theatrical sighs as I dabbed my forehead with a washcloth full of ice cubes, my teenage insolence rearing its head in the adversity of the damp heat.

“Fine, no temperature controlling spells. What about air conditioning?! Muggles use air conditioning!” I shouted as my father waltzed through the living room, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, seemingly unbothered by the humidity. He was always the picture of grace and refinement, not a wrinkle to be found in his linen shirt and not a single hair out of place.

“Installing air conditioning is a superfluous and inappropriate endeavor. This is a 16th century Italian villa, Draco. Not a penthouse in Manhattan,” he replied coolly, a hint of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth nonetheless. My bare feet dangled over the edge of the couch, the back of my hand pressed to my forehead like a Southern belle about to faint before a full audience. “Perhaps you should get out of the house. Go for a swim. Cool off in the water.”

“The ancient Egyptians invented air conditioning. I’m fairly certain it can be applied to 16th century buildings, Father,” I groaned, sitting up and rubbing the washcloth on the back of my neck.

“The trouble with you is that you know far too much about everything, my clever boy.” He kissed my perspiring forehead and headed off to his study.

I gazed forlornly at the frescoed ceiling, the fat cherubs flying above the heads of a Renaissance-era couple in celebration of the birth of their child. My eyes traced every crack in the plaster, every chip in the pastel blues and pinks as I had so many times before. If I got up too soon, I would be conceding defeat. Parental suggestions were not things to accept immediately. Holding out for a few agonizing minutes before acquiescing was the only way to keep your dignity intact.

With a grunt, I meandered outside, inhaling the thick scent of lavender, sumptuous fruit and the earthy aroma of Anchise, the elderly Silician groundskeeper, tilling the soil. I had some time to kill before the dreaded hour of summer disruption would be upon us. I set off in search of Pansy.   

 

***

 

Pansy and I were in my room when he arrived, both of us still indolent from the heat, the curative effects of our swim long since faded. It’s funny how the pace of summer marches on, this charmingly infectious leisure that seems to never end until suddenly it does. I sometimes miss the way it felt at that age, rife with possibilities.

The crunch of gravel under tires perked our ears, and we exchanged lazy smiles. Pansy jumped up, her black bob swinging behind her as she rushed to the windowsill, legs long and girlish in her black shorts. I didn’t know how she withstood the season in that perpetually dark wardrobe of hers. It was a sponge for sunlight. I tended to spend the summer in the lightest colors I could find, shirtless whenever possible, my pale skin constantly under sunblock protection. I didn’t tan; I burned, my pallor turning to boiled-lobster red if I wasn’t vigilant.

We looked down, and there he was, a wind-swept mop of dark hair, sunglasses shielding his eyes, that billowy blue Oxford button-down covering his broad shoulders, the one that would come to mean the world to me, its brushed cotton slipping through my ardent fingers like the most precious item I’d ever held.

“L’usurpateur,*” I said, cocking an eyebrow at Pansy.

Father greeted him jovially, as he did all his summer students, clapping him on the back and drawing him in for a hug. However, he wasn’t just any student. I knew that Father had known his parents back in England. They were legendary, their feats of bravery in the wizarding war reaching the ears of all our kind, but that world felt abstract to me. It wasn’t a place I’d grown up in. For us, it was a place to visit, not a place to live.

“Welcome, Harry! Forgive me for being an old man, but you were small enough to fit on my arm the last I saw you. Look at you now!” My father took a step back to survey him properly, holding him by the shoulders. “Taller than me!”

“I’m very useful for getting the sugar from the top shelf. Not useful for much else though, I’m afraid.” He laughed and pulled his bag from the back seat.

“Il semble confiant,**” I said to Pansy, sarcasm edging into the comment. She nodded with an impish smile.

Thus began the annual obligation, making space for a stranger in our little corner of paradise.

 

***

 

“Enchanté.” Pansy kissed Harry’s cheeks on the landing of the marble staircase, grinning wickedly over his shoulder. I rolled my eyes at her, sullen and already feeling the tedium of this unwelcome invasion. I silently led him up the stairs.

“My room is now your room. I’ll be next door.” I shot him a pointed glance as I gathered a pile of my things from the bed and tossed them into the adjoining room. He paid me no mind, flopping onto the bed in an undignified heap as soon as I cleared it off.

_Oaf._

“We have to share the bathroom. It’s my only way out.” I tried to imbue it with sharpness, establish dominance and all that. A chihuahua barking at a Great Dane.

_This is my home. You should be grateful I’m allowing this._

I shut the bathroom door and turned around to find him inelegantly snoring. I huffed, arms crossed as though waiting for him to apologize. He did nothing of the sort, sunglasses falling down the bridge of his nose, one end-piece trapped between the bed and his cheek.

He was going to wake up with a long, red imprint across his face.

I sighed heavily (dramatic exhalations were my specialty in those days… some would argue that hasn’t altogether changed) and shut the door behind me.

 

***

 

I heard Mafalda, our housekeeper, ringing the big brass bell downstairs, the sound echoing through the acoustics of the old house, bouncing against the rungs of the staircase and up into my room. I abandoned my sheet music, the dim light of my desk lamp no match for the darkening night. My mother and Mafalda were always scolding me for it, ranting about eyesight as they turned on an excessive number of overhead lights in whatever room I was hunched over, composing, writing, or reading, intent on my goals without a care for such things.

Strange to be so singularly obsessive at that age, isn’t it? In some ways, the world is never as open to you as it is then, the parties never-ending, the new companions rotating around you like a pageant parade of choices, just point and take. Yet I never wanted any of it. I spent much of my time locked in rooms, the balmy wind blowing in hints of apricot and freshly shorn grass as I poured my endless thoughts into journals and piano concertos.

I begrudgingly stood, my chair scraping across the hardwood, and knocked on his (my) door.

“We’re being called for dinner.”

Nothing. The faint squeak of bed springs groaning under shifting weight, but no response. I opened the creaking mahogany door and tiptoed into the dark room, muttering curses under my breath. This was absurd. This was a violation of my comfort. This was _my_ room, and here I was entering like a common criminal, crouched and hesitant, as though I were the one with anything to apologize for.

He continued to sleep undisturbed. I picked up a book from the shelf, and, fixing him with a withering stare I hoped to channel into his dreams, dropped it on the floor with a clatter.

“Oh…” he murmured, turning over at last, his disheveled hair having grown even worse from the lengthy nap, pieces sticking in all directions as he clutched the pillow and yawned, his eyes shuttering open and closed.

“We’re being called for dinner,” I repeated. Clipped. Unnegotiable.

“Yeah, I’m probably gonna pass,” he responded, breezing past my tone with maddening nonchalance, as though I were no more threatening than a newborn kitten. “Will you make an excuse for me to your mum, though? Thanks.”

I glared in the dusky tint of the room as he settled comfortably against my pillow, his arms tucking underneath him as a serene half smile formed on his face. I turned to walk away, fighting the urge to insist he drag his lazy arse out of bed and greet my mother’s table with a genial expression and a full appetite. One did not refuse to join Narcissa Malfoy for dinner. She took great care and great pride in planning spreads for guests. She might have left the pretentious world she was raised in behind, but that didn’t mean her etiquette and exquisite taste had left too. Did he really think it was good manners to outright — 

“So, this used to be your room, yeah?”

Was he really and truly serious?

I nodded with a noncommittal huff.

“Thanks. Later.” He rolled over, and resumed sleeping, soft snores filling the room.

 

***

 

“You _really_ don’t care? It’s unforgivably rude. We’re hosting him for six weeks!”

“I’m certain he’s quite tired from the journey. Let him sleep. It’s no matter.” My mother shrugged and poured herself a glass of wine. I was certain I’d never before seen her casually shrug.

“But — he’s — ” I helplessly started, unable to pinpoint just _what_ he was. Infuriatingly lackadaisical. Too bloody _cool_ for his own good. Breezy and effortless while I was sitting here, posture coiled, voice faintly hysterical.

“Why are you so fussy this evening, darling?” My mother frowned as she took a bite of grilled branzino.

“I’m not fussy! Children are fussy. I’m eighteen years old,” I protested, glumly picking at my plate.

My parents exchanged patronizing smiles over my head, and I scowled in a manner I hoped was fierce.

“Stop that!”

“Stop what, Draco? What is all this about?” my father asked, resting a reassuring hand on my arm. “I’m sure he’ll join us tomorrow. Eat your dinner.”

 

***

 

“Good morning, Professor!” Harry stepped outside, joining us at the breakfast table. He tilted his head skyward, beaming into the sun like it was the greatest vision he’d ever seen. He looked rejuvenated and in awe, carefree and elated, and I hated it. He patted my father on the back as though they were the oldest of friends. His sunglasses were gone, and in their place were round spectacles with dainty silver wire rims.

“Ah, back from the dead, I see!” my father said with a chuckle, his silver eyes gleaming in the sun. He crinkled his newspaper, folding it into a tidy pile on his lap. “How are you feeling?”

“Rested!” Harry exclaimed, tapping a spoon against a soft boiled egg with all the care of a Hippogriff ramming its beak into a melon. I cringed as the egg cracked messily, splattering yolk over the sides of the glass egg cup, bits of shell mixing in with the buttercup yellow. Did this man possess any manners whatsoever? Who had raised him?

“I can show you around… if you like,” I drawled as I swept a hand through my white-blond hair, eager to do my obligatory duty and be done with it. I had very important sulking and napping to do.

“That’d be great. Thank you.” A perfunctory glance my way, and then he was descending upon his glass of apricot juice, glugging it with all the sophistication of a caveman thumping a club on the ground.

Mafalda kindly opened another soft boiled egg for him, lopping off the top of the shell with finesse. It was absurd. A grown man, and he couldn’t do it properly on his own. The last time my mother had done that for me, I was eight years old.

“Have another egg!” my mother said, eyeing his egg-related gusto with curiosity. He’d tucked into it so quickly, he’d nearly inhaled the damn thing, sucked the contents out like it were a shot of vodka.

“No no no!” he said with a laugh. “I know myself too well. If I have a second, I’m just gonna have a third, and then a fourth, and then you’re just gonna have to roll me out of here.”

I eyed the exposed sliver of his chest, the top two buttons of his shirt undone to reveal a thatch of dark hair, a small silver locket dangling in the open space. I absently trailed a hand down my own neck, resting it at the base of my throat, my pale, virtually hairless body lying underneath the collar of my striped t-shirt, untouched and secret.

 

***

 

Like much of Northern Italy, the Crema town square was all brick streets and ancient architecture, high arches and thick Romanesque masonry, winsomely peeled stucco walls laced with creeping ivy.

I was surprised to see him handling a bicycle so well. I didn’t know what to expect from this wizarding royalty, this man whose family my own parents spoke about in a reverent tone. It was the kind of tone usually reserved for the most sacred of dusty magical texts as my father cradled them with careful gloved hands, turning the pages with a sparkle in his eye as he tilted a magnifying glass above the yellowed parchment, beckoning me closer with a childlike whisper of excitement. 

When it came to the Potters, I didn’t ask for details beyond that which I was given. There was a somber lilt to my parents’ voices when they talked about their early years. Their reasons for leaving the magical world behind for our more bohemian, mostly Muggle existence seemed to be a wound that had never properly closed up. I didn’t want to dig inside the sore, even though I knew I could if I wanted to.

My father always made it clear I could ask anything, his eager attempts to thwart his own father’s legacy of distance and cruelty resulting in an abundance of open dialogue that was almost embarrassing to my adolescent self. I suddenly required more privacy with every passing year, a need to huddle in the dark and muse over the aching desperation of youth growing like a cancer within me. I could see that it hurt him, that he wanted me as near as I’d always been, clinging to his leg and tugging at his sleeve as he worked until he would haul me in his lap and wrap my grubby fingers around the handle of that magnifying glass, helping me support the weight of it as he showed me the latest riveting kernel of knowledge he’d unearthed. We were European nomads immersed in rich cultural and intellectual pursuits, straining our eyes over book after book, a trio of makeshift librarians who shared a hunger for the written word.

Harry and I parked our bikes on the wall of a cafe and sat outside, perched in wrought iron chairs, me nursing an iced coffee and him nursing a beer.

“So, what do you do around here?” he asked, eyes flitting about the area, taking a gulp of his beer, foam lingering on his upper lip.

“Nothing. Wait for summer to end.” I leaned back and followed his cues of boredom, eyes aimlessly roaming the square.

“And how do you spend the winter? Let me guess, waiting for summer to come?”

“We don’t spend the winter here. We’re European mutts. ‘The globe is our home,’ or something like that. English by way of France by way of Italy. We’re in England most of the year since Father teaches at Oxford. We’re here for Christmas usually, but — ”

With one deft motion, he leaned forward and flicked his wand from his back pocket, unzipped his rucksack, and slipped it inside.

“Bold of you.” I narrowed my eyes, remembering too late that my sunglasses hid my derision.

“It’s not like someone is really going to stop me and ask what is it. It’s amazing what people will convince themselves they didn’t see, all for the sake of politeness. People don’t like confrontation, if they can avoid it.” He turned back to me, and I wished I could see what his green eyes were broadcasting underneath the shade of his glasses. At the same time, I was grateful for the separation. Every time I’d seen those glittering irises in unmitigated glory, something had stirred within me that was… unsettling. Any shield was welcome. “Don’t you carry yours?”

“Mother says we’re wizards of discretion.”

He laughed, a short, curious sound. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

“Well, that might work for your mother, but I’m afraid I’m a bit reliant on mine. Never know when you’re going to need it.”

“Besides my family and the last two PhD candidates, you’re probably the only wizard to step foot in this town. There really aren’t any wizarding villages in this part of Europe. Makes sense to be careful.” A touch of defense had found its way into my tone, but he didn’t bristle, only shrugged in that frustratingly casual manner of his.

“You might be surprised. We can be a covert lot. I’ve certainly found that out working on this infuriating manuscript,” he grumbled, gesturing vaguely to his rucksack. “You never answered me. What do you around here?”

“Read books. Transcribe music. Swim at the river. Go out at night.” I slumped in my seat, suddenly painfully aware of how pathetically dull my life sounded. I wondered what his life was like outside of the world of historical texts and etymology.

At twenty-two, he was a tad younger than the candidates I was used to seeing. He didn’t look like a scholar. He didn’t have that pinched-face, tunnel vision appearance of all the other doctoral students, their posture cramped like the elderly from hours bent over desks, their eyes straining from the endless perusal of books under library-lamp light. He was agile and tanned, toned muscles peeking through the thin fabric of his short-sleeved button-down. His glasses were about the only thing intellectual about his appearance. Everything else called to mind someone who felt more at home kicking a soccer ball across a field than sequestering himself among the stuffy academics.

“Sounds fun,” he said, curt and uninterested as he abruptly stood, slinging his bag over his shoulder and swinging a long leg over the bicycle I’d leant him. “Later.”

I straddled the seat of my own bike, brow furrowed as I watched him retreat, feeling decidedly dismissed and insignificant.

 

***

 

I found myself inexplicably lingering in Father’s study when he and Harry would scrutinize his materials. The agreement for housing these candidates involved a bit of cerebral labor in exchange for room and board. They would help with Father’s current projects, and they had the rest of the time to work on their dissertation.

Father didn’t question my presence. He simply seemed glad to see me back in that room with him, even if only as a silent observer. I crouched in a chair in the corner, concealing my covert glances at Harry’s body behind the cover of a novel, peering at them as they sorted archaeological slides into piles. 

“More apricot juice?” My mother entered with a silver tray in tow, her steps as light as air. She set it down and handed an eager Harry a glass.

“Here, tesoro.” She smiled at me, her blue eyes crinkling as she handed me a glass too. I took a measured sip and watched Harry down his in one swift gulp. He seemed to consume everything that way, one gluttonous swallow as though it would disappear if he didn’t devour it immediately. He smacked his lips, and I wrinkled my nose. Without preamble, he plucked his wand from his back pocket and conjured water into the empty glass.

“ _Aguamenti_ comes from the Spanish and Portuguese, _aqua_ meaning water and _mente_ meaning mind,” Father declared proudly, raking a hand through his pale hair.

“I may have to disagree with you there, Professor.” Harry flashed a broad grin, all teeth, and shot my mother an apologetic look. “I’m gonna talk etymology, so just bear with me a second. Er — normally you would be right, but in the case of _Aguamenti,_ it’s a little bit more of a complicated journey. Although it does have roots in Spanish and Portuguese, both _agua_ and _mente_ are derived from Latin originally: the Latin terms, _aqua_ meaning water and _mens_ meaning mind, which of course becomes _mente_ when adapted into Spanish. There’s also a suggestion among some linguistics scholars in the wizarding community that it may be a hybrid of _‘água’_ and ‘augment’, in the sense of ‘to increase’, hence the filling of the receptacle with water, increasing in volume, etcetera. But that leads us to rather dry quibbling about minutiae between experts which — ”

Harry paused as he noticed our sly smiles.

“Why am I getting the sense there’s a joke in the Malfoy family that I’m not in on?”

“Passed with flying colors,” Father pronounced with a definitive wave in the air, beaming at Harry.

“He does this every year. A sort of nerd-off to prove yourself,” I explained with a roll of my eyes.

He smiled at me for the briefest of moments, and my heart jumped into my throat. Looking back now, I think it remained there, lodged and throbbing, for the entirety of his stay.

 

***

 

Over the next few days, I made excuses to trail behind him like a silent devotee, a panting puppy trotting along, struggling to keep up with his confident stride, his mile-long legs covering effortless distance. I was sickened by myself, but I couldn’t seem to stop it.

We would amble down the streets of Crema, Harry always deciding that the high noon sun was an indicator for the day’s drinking to begin. It wasn’t unusual for that part of the world, particularly in summer. Many people drank at midday meals, and the academics even more so. Parties at the house with Father’s university friends were always filled with wine glasses clinking in drunken toasts, brandy with dessert, and drinks in the parlor after dinner.

Still, he did it with the self-assurance with which he did everything, walking into a neighborhood bar as though he owned it, rendering my skills as tour guide completely useless. He greeted the old Italian men who took up residence there during the day, the ones whose lives consisted of chain-smoking, drinking, and playing endless card games, like they were well-established friends. He’d only been here a week and somehow had assumed the role of charming local, able to hold an amiable conversation with anyone he came across.

“How do you know about this place?” I asked, unable to keep the juvenile excitement from my voice.

He merely smiled and turned his attention back to the men seated around the table, pulling up a chair and joining the card game as though picking up where he’d left off only minutes ago.

“Ciao, Romano.”

“Ciao, Harry!” A man dealt him in, and I pulled up a chair behind him, no room left at the table.

 

***

 

The atmosphere of summer did nothing to dissuade my lust. As the heat mounted, layers came off to expose more flesh. Tantalizing slopes of bare shoulders and curves of muscular thighs were on display everywhere I turned.

Pansy sat beside me on the verdant lawn, her tank top clad body leaning into mine.

“Sicuramente è meglio di quello dell’anno scorso, ti ricordi?***” she said with a twinkle in her eye, nudging me with a sweaty shoulder. I inched further away and said nothing.

“Oui. Much better. He’s so handsome,” Maria chimed in, flipping her chestnut hair over her shoulder with a sigh.

This wasn’t a line of questioning I wanted to be caught between. I stood up and walked over to the table at the edge of the grass, circling the perimeter from a safe distance, my eyes continually drawn to his naked chest as he volleyed the ball over the net. He made a point for their team, triumphantly picking Chiara up by her lithe waist. She squealed in delight, and I stared at his large hands nestled in the small of her back, the patch of hair between his pectorals, trailing down the center of his stomach where it disappeared beneath his shorts.

I grabbed a bottle of water and an apricot from the table, walking back to where Pansy sat, my eyes glued to the ground.

“Draco! Acqua!” Maria’s hand reached out, and I offered the bottle.

“Perfect timing!” Harry jogged up and intercepted the bottle, chugging it like he had an interminable thirst that couldn’t be quenched. I glared at him as he braced his hand on my shoulder. Did his rudeness know no bounds? Did he think everyone owed him, walking around like he expected all of us to part the sea at his will?

None of our summer guests had been this gregarious. Mostly they’d been coiled into themselves, absorbed in their work like the outside world mattered very little. Harry seemed to be treating this stay as a vacation rather than an academic retreat.

His grip on my shoulder turned into a caress, the callused tips of his fingers digging into the muscle below my shoulder blade, and I felt my body yield to the press of his hand, a ripple running down my arm like a soothing balm. I wrenched free and hurriedly began to walk away, but he followed, letting out that light, airy laugh of his.

“What’s wrong, Draco? Did I pinch a nerve?”

I scowled at the question. It seemed to say so much, and I detested it. What did he know? How incisive could he possibly be, this carefree, brawny man who spent his days drinking old men under the table and chatting everyone up like he could sense what would seduce them, could be the exact person they wanted at the precise moment he needed to be? I stood on the sidelines, foul-tempered and envious, ever the spectator who wished they would all vanish and leave only the two of us.

“I’m fine,” I gritted out, watching the volleyball game with feigned intensity, ignoring the burgeoning smile I could see in my periphery.

“Here. Hold this.” He thrust the water bottle into my hand and set to work on my shoulder again. I tried to wrestle out of his grasp, but he pulled me back, warm palms, slightly damp from exercise, stroking my arm and shoulder. “Trust me. I’m going to be a doctor, remember?”

I rolled my eyes at the trite joke, my gaze darting around. I felt certain everyone around us could sense the arousal radiating off me, a thick cloud of pheromones penetrating the air and signaling to all that I wanted him.

“You’re too tense, Draco. You should try to relax more,” he murmured, leaning in so close I could feel his heat, could count his breaths as they puffed against my skin. “Pansy, come here! Help me out.”

Suddenly, I felt Pansy’s hand replace his, and I stiffened.

“Feel that knot? He’s too tense, isn’t he?”

“Oh, you have no idea, Harry. Draco Malfoy has always been one tight ball of nerves. He’s our broody little darling though. We love him.” Pansy rubbed my shoulder, and disappointment flooded me as someone called Harry back to the game. He muttered a quick “later,” always that brusque word of leave I despised so much, like I was nothing more than a common maid to be waved away. “He’s right, you know. You really should — ”

I shook Pansy off and stalked away, the imprint of his hand lingering on me like a bruise.

 

***

 

Harry didn’t show for dinner that night. I watched his empty place setting, boring my eyes into it as though it would fill up with his long limbs if I looked hard enough. I glanced at my mother and gestured to the empty chair.

“Lui è in ritardo****,” she said with a small smile.

“Don’t you think it’s rude when he says ‘Later’? Arrogant? Like he’s brushing us off? Like we’re the valet who just parked his car?” I spat out, leaning back in my chair. It was an idyllic July night, the air cooled down from midday, the night dusky and temperate, a balmy breeze rustling the branches of the peach trees, birds calling out into the darkness. The table was candlelit. We often dined outdoors during the summer, a curtain of stars blanketing above us as the sun faded into a ruddy vermilion behind the rolling acres of land.

My parents exchanged an inscrutable look. They had been doing that above my head more and more those days, and I found it intolerable.

“I think he’s just shy,” my father offered, pouring us all a glass of wine.

I made a guttural noise of disbelief.

“You can’t be serious. He’s a social butterfly. He’s… the most _American_ Englishman I’ve ever met. It’s appalling.” I scraped a spoon through my risotto and narrowed my eyes. My parents laughed, my father giving my mother’s hand an affectionate squeeze.

“Now now, Draco, don’t be a snob. We have to put up with him for six long weeks. Do stop that peevish teenage attitude of yours. It’s most unbecoming. Be a good host, darling,” my mother admonished, drizzling oil and vinegar on top of the grilled peach slices lining her salad.

“I think he’s shy,” my father repeated with a tilt of his head, his eyes examining me across the table, “and I think you’ll grow to like him.”

“And what if I grow to hate him?”

“Mio piccino!” my mother scolded. “Mafalda, you can clear Harry’s place. I don’t think he’ll be joining us tonight.”

I turned my eyes heavenward, a beleaguered sigh escaping my lips, and slid my chair into the space Harry should have been occupying.

 

***

 

“Play something for us, Draco.”

My father squeezed my shoulder as he walked past me, a glass of brandy in his hand.

“Non mi va.*****” I slung my skinny legs over the arm of my chair, restless and petulant, watching some insipid Italian TV show that was doing nothing for my mood.

“Perchè non ti va?” my mother asked, reaching from her position on the couch, running a hand through my hair.

“I just don’t! Can’t you leave me be for once?”

In the fall, I would be attending the Conservatoire de Paris, playing piano until my fingers went numb. All I wanted was to while away the summer hours one last time, even if my skin was itching with an incurable disquiet I couldn’t quite name.

“Go see your friends. What’s Pansy up to tonight? Don’t waste away in the living room, dear.”

I rose with a dramatic stomp onto the wooden floor.

“Fine. I’ll waste away in my room, where there isn’t an audience to remark on my every move.”

 

***

 

I couldn’t sleep. I stripped off all my clothes, the breeze from the open window wafting over my neglected cock. I stroked it with languid interest, trying in vain not to conjure images of dark, loosely curled hair and olive skin.

I gazed toward the open bathroom door. I’d left it ajar in some voyeuristic hope that he’d wander in, tired and perhaps a little drunk from his evening’s revelry, carelessly untucking his cock from his shorts to take a piss. He’d assume I was asleep or maybe he wouldn’t care either way, calling on the longstanding locker room camaraderie of men, the tradition of comfortable nudity that I could never quite fathom, always too afraid of my secret being unearthed by the probing eyes around me. I couldn’t relax in those situations. Everyone dismissed it as modesty or my usual fussiness, the tendency to stand by my own rather than among the crowd that people had come to know as simply my way.

I looked at the blue tile on the bathroom walls, the moonbeams leaking in to bounce off the shiny floor, and imagined Harry standing there, shedding his shorts instead of merely unzipping them, the fabric falling off the irresistible curve of his arse. My hand sped up on my cock, my fingers reaching up to stroke across my chest, flicking a sensitive nipple, a bitten back moan dying on my tongue.

It hurt. It hurt because it felt wonderful, and it hurt because it wasn’t his hand on my swollen erection, coaxing my feverish flesh into glorious relief. I stopped touching myself, unable to handle the pain and equally unable to suffer the joy. I atrophied in lustful purgatory, but I also loved that addictive yearning. It felt like the truest, rawest state one could reside in.

I cursed him for being somewhere else, no doubt frolicking with local girls, the ones who hung on his every word, their flirty eyelashes blinking toward him as they threw their arms around his neck. I thought of Chiara draped all over him on the lawn, the way Maria and Pansy spoke of him like he was a supreme being, an archetype of masculine perfection, the likes of which they’d never seen before. They were right, but I wanted him all for my own.  

I wanted him, but I hated that desire. It drilled into me like an animal burrowing into the pit of my stomach, consuming me until I was a hollow shell of ache. All traces of the previous Draco were being slowly eradicated. I belonged to him and him alone, and he didn’t even know I existed.

Was it better to want him than to have him? The prospect of relief was too awful to contemplate. Was there anything more terrifying than spinning fantasy into reality? Disappointment always lurked around the corner when you finally got what you wanted.

I was curious which desire would win out in the end and whether or not it would destroy us both. Was my neediness like a disease that could infect him with every brush of his skin on mine? What was desire and why was it such a foreign horror, tantalizing yet sharp, the apple of Eden laden with shards of glass? I felt certain I would die solving this riddle, writhing in my own painful bed of yearning, growing over top of my corpse like tenacious, thorny vines, thick and binding.

With a pained whimper, I ignored the throb between my legs, rolling onto my stomach as though to stifle it, trapping my cock between my torso and the sheets, out of sight and out of reach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:
> 
> * the usurper
> 
> ** He seems confident.
> 
> *** He’s a big improvement from last year, do you remember?
> 
> **** He’s late.
> 
> ***** I don’t feel like it.
> 
> Why don’t you feel like it?


	2. Chapter 2

I was losing the battle with my insistent cock. While everyone was away, enjoying the brilliant sun of a new day, I was shirtless on my bed, my hand finding its way into my shorts, curling around my shaft and stroking. I started the way I liked to, an unhurried pace that would build to something more — 

Harry burst into the room after two quick raps on the door, giving me barely enough time to roll over and grab the book lying on the bed beside me, a decoy that I was certain he didn’t buy at all. I turned my knee into the bed in a clumsy attempt to block my groin from view.

“Hey.” He gripped the brass railing at the foot of the bed and leaned forward, his shoulders rising attractively as he gazed down at me with a muted smile. His chest was bare, a small pair of yellow shorts resting low on his hips. The commonplace nudity of European summer didn’t feel so commonplace anymore. Not when he was around. Everything was obscene, and I wanted it to stop. “What are you doing?”

“Reading,” I said tersely, begging my heart to stop thumping in my chest, my cheeks to stop rapidly blooming pink.

“Why aren’t you by the river with everyone else?” He leaned his forearms on the metal footboard, his eyes dissecting me. He knew. He had to have known. Why was he torturing me like this?

“I… have an allergy.” I bit my lip to keep from wincing at my inept response.

 _What the fuck does that even mean?_  

“Oh yeah? Me too. Maybe we have the same one.” Harry smiled at me, those alluring lips full and red. To punch or to kiss? It was the eternal dilemma. I felt certain he was mocking me, and I hated him for it. Why couldn’t he leave me to privately stew in my shame? “Why don’t you and I go swimming?”

“What? Right now?” I didn’t look up from my book, squinting at the page as I exhaled raggedly.

"Yep. _Right now._ Come on.” He walked around to the side of the bed and clasped my wrist, my hand instinctively wrapping around his forearm as he attempted to pull me off the mattress. I looked down at his big fingers curled around my skinny wrist, the pressure driving my pulse up, up, up.

“Does it have to be right now?”

_Please don’t let go._

He didn’t.

“I’ll go get changed.” He squeezed my wrist and, laying his free hand over my own, smiled before slowly letting it drop away.

I took a moment to compose myself, glowering at my crotch as though it would deflate faster if I scolded it. I walked into the bathroom, shedding my shorts and grabbing my trunks from the edge of the tub, and there he was, the open door giving me an uninterrupted view into his (my) room. I froze as I watched his bare arse, the skin lighter than the rest of his body, slowly disappear behind the cover of red swim trunks. He turned to me and didn’t skip a beat. Did he know I’d seen? Did he care?

“See you downstairs,” he said offhandedly, clipping the edge of his glasses on the waistband of his shorts as he cast me a parting glance.

 

***

 

I stayed close to the rim of the inground pool, my sheet music on the edge, pencil in hand as I scribbled distracted notes, sunglasses guarding my hungry eyes. Harry did laps in the pool, my eyes catching on his undulating body as he swam past me. I would shift my gaze back to my composition as soon as he would rise from the shimmering water, slick and as sensuously dewy as a Muggle’s idea of a mermaid.

“Draco, what are you doing?” he called to me from the other side of the pool, and I refused to look up lest my whole body ignite like a Phoenix on Burning Day.

“Reading my music.”

“No, you’re not. You’re distracted.”

_Why are you like this? Let me be pitiable. Let me suffer in peace._

“Thinking, then…” I allowed, my eyes still fixed to the pages.

“Yeah? Galleon for your thoughts?” He perched next to me. I heard the wet slap of his skin on the pool’s edge.

“It’s private,” I muttered.

“You’re not going to tell me?” Finally, there was a hint of exasperation in his voice, none of that annoying chipperness he so often affected.

“No. I’m not going to tell you.” I doodled nonsensically around the edge of the page.

“He’s not going to tell me what he’s thinking about!” Harry called to my mother with a laugh.

“Draco!” my mother playfully chided.

“Fine. Guess I’ll hang out with the lovely Narcissa then.” I turned as I heard the swish of his legs through the water, regret falling over me like a shameful film.

 

***

 

The next day, I sat under a tree with my guitar, listlessly strumming Bach’s “Capriccio” as Harry lay on a towel in the sun, a tempting Adonis I was powerless to ignore. Could he feel my eyes on him the way I could sense his presence at the corners of my vision?

“Sounds nice,” he quietly announced, a placid expression on his face, his eyes still closed, his hands folded across his golden stomach.

“Thought you didn’t like it…” I trailed off helplessly, praying for those green eyes to open. They did, his gaze lazily shifting to meet mine.

“Play it again.”

I considered that for a moment. Without responding, I stood up and sauntered toward the house.

“Follow me.” I didn’t explain any further, but as soon as I was sure he couldn’t see me, I swiveled my head in his direction to make sure he was coming. I sat at the piano bench and launched into the song, faster and with extra flourishes this time, combinations I couldn’t make on the guitar. I looked to him as I finished, my chin held high as he frowned at me, his hand resting on his hip. My eyes flitted to the slanted creases above his hip bones, those perfect lines I wanted to trace with my tongue.

“That sounds different. Did you change it?”

“Well… I changed it a _little_ bit,” I said with a shrug and a flip of my hair.

“Why?” he asked with a curious tilt of his head.

“I just played it the way Liszt would have played it if he’d altered Bach’s version,” I explained as though it were painfully obvious.

“Just play what you played outside,” Harry demanded, crossing his arms and leaning against the door frame.

“Oh… you want me to… just play the thing I played outside?” I asked innocently, stroking my chin.

“Please.”

I smiled to myself as my fingers descended upon the keys. I switched the song into a minor key and made everything an octave lower, the brightness of the song reshaped into something more ominous. As I finished, I looked at him, a challenging eyebrow raised, and he shook his head, his wavy hair rustling with the movement.

“I can’t believe you changed it again.”

“I just changed it a _little_ bit.”

“Yeah, why?!” He was incredulous, but he was also laughing. Maybe I was doing something right.

“I just played it the way Busoni would’ve played it if he’d altered Liszt’s version.”

“Can’t you just play Bach’s version? What’s wrong with Bach?” he asked with a sigh.

“Bach never wrote it for the guitar so what I was playing outside isn’t the truest version anyway. In fact, we’re not even sure it’s Bach at all,” I lectured him, and he turned to leave.

“Forget I asked!”

Why couldn’t I just be nice?

_Come back. I didn’t mean it. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know anything at all._

My parched mouth unable to form the words, I began to play what he had asked for instead, the sweet, simple melody I’d strummed on the guitar. He halted his steps, spinning around to smile at me before he left. 

 

***

 

_I was too harsh when I told him I thought he didn’t like the Bach. What I really meant was I thought he hated me…_

I furiously scribbled the words in my notebook and then crossed them out one by one, angry strikethrough lines repeated over and over again until the message underneath was completely obscured. I whined as I fell onto my bed, sinking into my own misery.

Why was I so aloof when he was around? I despised my ugly, misguided attempts at cleverness. I was a young boy playing at being a craftily coy man enticing a lover into his web, knowing full well I could never be that. I was a kite bandied about in hurricane winds, unstable and untethered, oscillating from emotion to emotion, the tides turning with every second. I was constantly perched on uneven ground, threatening to fall one way or the other, never knowing which I’d decide until I had already landed.

He wasn’t like that. I wanted him, but I wanted to _be_ him too, to absorb his power and his musk and the brilliant emerald gleam of those eyes that I both wanted to kiss and to gouge out, to mount on pikes as beautiful trophies.

I insulted him when I meant to banter. I glowered when I meant to raise a flirtatious, carefully calculated eyebrow. I was clunkily navigating the steps to a dance I’d never seen before, the language of seduction that no one had taught me to speak.

He hated me. I was sure of it. He loathed everything about me, wanted to vomit at the sight of my face, and I wanted to die. Wanted to chuck myself into the bottom of the river if he didn’t want me. I felt as though I might explode with no outlet for my obsession, melting into volcanic ash. Yet still I hoped Harry would sweep me up, spread my blackened ruins on his moist lips and swallow me until I could live in the comfort of his belly forever.

I walked over to the oak wardrobe and sat down on the floor, opening the small drawer near the bottom. My fingers found the sanded-smooth surface of the object I was looking for. I picked it up and tossed it from hand to hand, feeling the thrum of magic underneath the surface of the hawthorn wood, the way the invisible waves of power pulsing through the unicorn hair core seemed to reach out for me, like tendrils of electricity connecting my hand to the wand. It was an indescribable feeling. It was like spying an old friend across the street, decades after you’d known one another. Despite the deepening of the lines around your mouths and eyes, the flagging of your posture, the spark of recognition is as vivid as a lightning strike because you’d recognize them anywhere, could sense the very essence of their soul as though it were your own.

I lay down on the floor and pointed the wand in the direction of my closed door.

“ _Lumos_ ,” I whispered, and the tip of my wand emitted a weak white light. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, concentrating my energy. I felt a subtle buzzing along the surface of my skin, like the goosebumps of anticipation before I would dive into the river when I was small, back when the depth of the shallows felt like the uncharted water of the ocean, larger than life and not to be trifled with.

I opened my eyes, and, more assertively, said it again.

“ _Lumos_.” The light was bright and clear this time, a robust illumination that surpassed my weak desk lamp.

I smiled to myself and tried a few more spells, sending red and green sparks out of my wand and watching them dispel, crackling to life and fading to leave ghostly imprints of their shape in the dark, like Muggle fireworks jetting across the summer sky.

Moving to the bed, I settled underneath the sheet and set about the task of levitating the paperback sitting on my nightstand, moving it up and down and side to side in the space above me. My eyelids grew heavy, and I gently lowered the book onto my stomach.

I fell asleep with my wand in my hand, warm and snug in my palm like it had been fitted to the shape of my fingers.

 

***

 

“Draco! Are you sleeping?”

I blinked behind my sunglasses, the threads of a fading summer afternoon dream scattering as his voice called me to consciousness.

“I was,” I pronounced acridly. Sleep was the only place I was safe from my craving, the only bit of solace I could find amidst that terrible hunger that beat within me like a second heart. Yet here he was disrupting it, making his presence known as he always did, his commanding nature packaged in a boyish charm that no one could resist. 

“Listen to this drivel. Tell me what you think.”

I opened my eyes, tearing my sunglasses off and approaching him. He was lying on the edge of the pool, his lean form stretched to its seemingly endless length, a page from his manuscript hovering above his bespectacled face. I stood above him, allowing myself to relish the view for a moment before the inevitable self-loathing set in.

“For the early iterations of Latin based incantations, one must connect a secular influence and therefore infer a cooperation amongst wizardkind and humanity that has endured with enough persistence to allow for little evolution where semantic form of spellwork is concerned. Why then, must this historical precedent be concealed and obscured with great enigmatic details whose minutiae are so tenuously defined as to cause futile debate between even the most knowledgeable of Magical History scholars?” he read, rushing through the words as though he was tired of them and wanted to bequeath their responsibility to someone else.

“Does that make any sense to you? It no longer does to me.” He threw the pages down next to him and rested his hands on his stomach, his eyes searching the sky. “The words are just swimming together like too many memories running across a Pensieve at once. I can’t trust my eyes or my head anymore.”

I shrugged, trying to maintain my apathy, but the smile inside me stretched across the length of my chest. He wanted my opinion on his manuscript. _Mine._

“I imagine it made sense when you wrote it.”

He laughed, that crisp, musical sound that had been gradually infiltrating my blood like a virus, the satisfaction of hearing it akin to hitting the clearest note on a finely tuned piano.

“That’s the kindest thing anyone’s said to me in months.”

“Kind?” I raised an eyebrow at that, his tone so low and earnest I couldn’t help but look away, the blush already beginning to overtake my sun-kissed cheeks.

“Yes. Kind.”

I felt his eyes on me, unwavering and sharp as a needle through my lungs, but I refused to meet them, half-afraid of what wanton confessions would tumble from my lips if I saw those brilliant green jewels and the drops of humidity gathering on his finely-sculpted shoulders. Oh, how I dreamt of licking at each bead of moisture that settled on his sable skin.

“Well, it _is_ a bit overwrought. Perhaps your meaning is getting lost in wanking over complicated language. I’ve noticed it’s a problem among doctoral candidates.”

As usual, he greeted my jagged edges with laughter and fond smiles, never disarmed by my sourness.

“Have you told your father about your feelings on the subject?”

“He says ‘one has to play the game to be met with the arms of induction,’ whatever that means.” I sat down on the stone edge of the pool, daring to glance at the dip above his hip bone, the hint of ribs in the middle of his taut torso as his arms stretched above his head, teasing the fabric of his red trunks downward. How I longed to settle between those hair-dappled thighs and lave my tongue over everything he would let me. I imagined him spearing me with those glittering eyes the whole time, watching me lick, lick, lick for hours on end. I wouldn’t stop until he pried me away.

“Your father is a very wise man, Draco.” Unceremoniously, he rolled off the edge, plunging into the pool with a splash, his brown skin surrounded by aquamarine, a mythical creature encased in gleaming crystal.

 

***

 

A local bar had a large concrete platform out back, a DJ pumping dance music on the weekends that I couldn’t stand, mostly obnoxious French and Italian pop songs. All the teens and twenty-somethings home for the summer molded to each other’s bodies, chasing a remedy for their restless summer lust. I sat at a table watching it all unfold one night, sipping sangria, the fruity tang puckering my lips as I smoked a cigarette. I couldn’t tear my eyes off Harry. Although that was hardly news by then, this time there was another reason for it.

He was dancing with Chiara, their hips swaying together in a sensual rhythm as she smiled up at him. They were melded together, barely a hair’s breadth between them. I sucked on my cigarette, leaning back in my chair, unable to focus on the conversation around me.

“Ma ci sta provando?*” a friend of Maria’s asked. I barely heard him, every surrounding sound like the incoherent buzz of white noise.

“Ha già cuccato?” Maria asked, and everyone stopped talking. I realized they were waiting for me to respond.

“Che ne so.” I shrugged, stamping out my cigarette on the ground, continuing to watch Harry’s hands exploring her back, his palms cupping her delicate shoulders. He leaned in to kiss her, and everyone whooped their approval. I lit another cigarette and squeezed my eyes shut, my jaw tensing.

The music switched to a Depeche Mode song, “Enjoy the Silence,” and Pansy wrapped her arms around me from behind, pulling me to her chest.

“Draco darling, come dance with me! I’m bored.”

“No. I don’t feel like it.”

“Oh, come on. You spoil everyone’s fun when you’re like this. Look, Brian’s DJing tonight. He’s playing that depressing British shit you like.” She swept a hand through my hair and squeezed my shoulders.

“It’s not depressing if you can dance to it, now is it?” I canted my head enough to look into her mischievous hazel eyes.

“Are you coming then?”

“Fine, fine. I’ll be out in a minute.” I waved her away, my gaze finding Harry again. He’d separated from Chiara and was dancing on his own, singing along, his eyes closed in bliss. He danced like a man who didn’t care who was watching, arms happily flailing.

_Words like violence_

_Break the silence_

_Come crashing in_

_Into my little world_

In spite of the tightness in my chest, I smiled. He looked so joyous and worry free. From the dance floor, Pansy beckoned to me with a manicured hand, and my grin widened. I was going to miss her next year. Although there was always the possibility that we’d both return to Italy during our university breaks, it felt like our last proper summer together, the uncertainty of our collegiate futures like some dazzling beacon of adventure beckoning to us in the distance.

I joined her, my back to Harry. I wondered if he could feel my heat as acutely as I could feel his, every movement he made sending a shockwave through my body. As I bounced in time with the music, I hoped I’d crash into him, our shoulders colliding, the hair on his calves tickling my legs.

_All I ever wanted_

_All I ever needed is here in my arms_

_Words are very unnecessary_

_They can only do harm_

Pansy reached for my hand, and I took it, twirling her around as she squealed with glee.

 

***

 

Pansy and I stripped to our underwear. We liked to swim in the river at night sometimes, the soothing music of the cicadas and the gentle lapping of our arms in the water the perfect way to end the day. We’d done it less and less as we’d gotten older, the separation of puberty like a chasm pushing the rituals of our younger selves apart.

“Are you here with me because you’re mad about Chiara?” she asked suddenly, her eyes dark and serious in the moonlight.

“What are you talking about?” I was thankful for the darkness. I didn’t trust my face not to betray me.

“Draco, come on… we’ve known each other for ages. Are we really going to pretend I can’t see the way you look at him?”

I froze as I took off my shorts, gazing off into the distance, concentric circles pushing to the surface of the water as a fish moved somewhere in the depths of the river.

“I don’t look at him in _any_ way. I don’t look at him _at all._ ”

“Then kiss me.” Pansy yanked at my arm, turning me around.

“What? No! Pans, you’re… you’re like my sister. What’s wrong with you tonight?”

Pansy’s face tightened up, her lip quivering. She looked like she might cry. I’d never seen her look like that. Not poker-faced Pansy. Pansy Parkinson, the girl who was always ready with a scathing, quippy comeback for anyone who so much as looked at her the wrong way, did not cry.

“The least you could do is be honest with me. Don’t I deserve that much?” Her voice cracked, and she gathered up her clothes, running off into the night, the first person to see straight into the center of my deepest secret.

 

***

 

I couldn’t sleep that night. Harry wasn’t back yet, his bed empty and the lights out. My imagination ran wild picturing all the ways he was most assuredly touching Chiara, her gasps of ecstasy and his groans of pleasure like a horrific symphony I couldn’t drive out of my head.

The hunger of youth can be debilitating, can’t it? It’s a ravenous beast uncoiling in your belly, jaws unhinging, fangs clamping down as it consumes you from the inside out. It is a despair that seems to know no bounds, a hole that only grows deeper the closer you get to filling it, expanding to accommodate a never-ending well of need. It is an insect in flight, its iridescent wings mysterious and no easier to define up close.

In those days, I often felt like I wanted to burn the world or I wanted it to burn me, scorch me with it’s mysteries and mundanities until I was a blackened strip of a thing, rapturously spent and reshaped into something far more interesting than I’d ever been. I was waiting for something to happen to me, some indelible experience to come along and justify this dangerous searing feeling inside me, this dormant volcano that felt at turns exciting and oh so volatile. I was certain Harry Potter was that thing. The match to my tinder.

It scared me. What was I capable of? When my fire was finally set loose, what ruin would come of it? I sometimes felt like I could lay mere cities to waste with just the flames rising between my legs when I looked at him. What would happen if I actually touched him? It was a torturous state, wanting something that left me trembling in the fear of its power. I wondered constantly if I might combust in indecision, ending it all in a brilliant blaze before it even began.

 

***

 

The next morning, he was at breakfast, his eyes droopy with fatigue. I wondered how late he’d gotten in. Exhausted by my own anguish, I’d eventually drifted off and hadn’t heard him come back. He scooped the top of his eggshell off on the first attempt, no longer requiring Mafalda’s skillful touch. I stared at him, trying to summon his attention, but he didn’t give it to me.

“We almost had sex last night. Pansy and me.” I straightened my spine, lengthening my posture into some poor imitation of cock-sure masculinity, and my father’s fingers flinched around the edge of his newspaper.

“And why didn’t you?” My father raised his pale brows, his shrewd gaze no doubt seeing right through my idiotic masquerade. This wasn’t like me. I was withdrawn and thoughtful. Even when I was at my harshest, I wasn’t that type of man. I didn’t want to be.

“I don’t know.” I shrugged and dipped a spoon into the yolk of my egg. “All I had to was find the courage to ask. She would have done it.”

“Well, you know what they say… better to have tried and failed,” Harry said with a smirk and a shake of his head. I wanted to make him jealous, but I’d only succeeded in making myself look ridiculous, sexist, uncouth, _repulsive_ even. I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me into a suffocating, dirty grave. That’s what I deserved. “Try again later.”

“Try what later?” my mother asked as she walked outside. Harry and my father exchanged smiles and lapsed into awkward laughter.

“Oh, nothing. Harry, I just heard from the people in Sirmione. They say they’ve come up with something. I’m going there today. Would you like to join me?” My father smiled and sipped his coffee.

“Definitely! What’d they find?”

“I can come too, can’t I?” I asked, internally cringing over how obvious I was being.

“Of course, Draco! But only on the condition that you remain silent.” He put a finger to his lips, his smile broadening to indicate that this was no run-of-the-mill discovery.

“Silent as in ‘don’t ramble on about our opinions’, or silent as in ‘don’t tell a soul what fabulous things have been dug up’, Lucius?” Harry queried, catching on. He had such a familiarity with my father. It was quite atypical. My father had always been hard to read. Accessible, yes. Amicable, sure. But he held his cards close to his chest when he needed to, and his confidence was something to be earned. It was rare to see someone have such a genuine rapport with him in that short a span of time.

“Perceptive as always, Harry. However, nothing is being dug up. It’s what the water brought _to_ us. Treasures abound in the most fortuitous of manners, my boys. We can’t choose when the Earth will bestow its gifts upon us, but we can make sure to be its humble audience when it chooses to grace us with the presence of a long hidden pearl, can’t we?”

We all smiled at one another, the moment of anticipation eclipsing my earlier mortification. 

 

***

 

The pardon didn’t last long, for I chose to plunder in the mire once again. Apparently, I was hell-bent on destroying any goodwill between us.

Chiara stopped by before we left, and I was forced to watch them laugh as they huddled together, Harry planting a kiss on her cheek as she departed. I braced my hand on the open car door, gripping it until the metal edge dug into my palm. He walked up, easygoing as ever, hands in his pockets as he strode toward me.

Ignoring my presence, he started to open the passenger side door.

“Father always sits up front with Anchise to navigate.”

Without a word or a glance in my direction, he slipped into the backseat. I got in next to him and shut the door.

“She seems to like you a lot. She’s even more beautiful than she was last year.”

He didn’t say anything, merely stared ahead.

“Everyone wants her. Maria’s friend Alessandro has been obsessed with her for years.”

Finally, he turned to me, his eyebrows knitting together.

“Are you trying to get me to like her?”

I shrugged and shifted uncomfortably in my seat. Our legs brushed, and my breath hitched.

“What’s the harm in that?” I picked at a spot of lint on my t-shirt and fixed my eyes on the little bump where his quadricep met his knee. I wanted to lay my head on his thigh and kiss that spot while he stroked my hair.

“I like to arrive at those things on my own, if you don’t mind. I don’t know what you’re after today, but I’m not indulging you.”

I looked up, surprised at the annoyance in his tone.

“Draco, don’t play at being the good host, okay? Just don’t.” It was the first time I’d ever heard a bite to his words, and I worried that I’d truly stepped too far this time. I opened my mouth to try to salvage it, to say something, anything to let him know I didn’t mean to be this way, that I couldn’t seem to sand down my jagged edges no matter how hard I tried.

Before I could speak, Father was entering the driver’s side, the creak of the old car door slicing into my unrest and making me jump.

“Are we ready, boys? Harry! What are you doing back there? Come sit up front and be my navigator.”

“W-wh — ”

Harry cut off my baffled stammering with a victorious smile and exited the backseat. 

 

***

 

I hung back, leaving a few paces between Harry and me, atoning for the sins of my forked tongue. I watched his tall stride as he listened attentively to my father, their bodies blinking in and out of view among the broken walls of the Grottoes of Catullus. My fingers trailed along the rough, sandpapery edges of the bricks that made up the chipped remains of whatever grand home had been erected there centuries ago.

My father was explaining the history behind the ruins as we made our way to Lake Garda, animatedly telling Harry that they were named after the poet Gaius Valerio Cattulus. He owned a home on the peninsula and had written gushing odes to the beauty of the place.

I could see why. Although there was no way to know what it had looked like in Cattulus’s time, the remnants of the structure were gorgeous in their imperfection, terraces overlooking the lake, layers of brick and stone with unpredictable pockets of damage, poetry to be found in the decay of time, what it chose to eradicate and what it chose to preserve.

The late afternoon sun glinted off Harry’s shiny dark hair, and I wanted to come up behind him and wrap my arms around his waist. I wanted to plead for his forgiveness, to murmur penance in the nape of his neck, to sink to my knees and offer him the world.

“Albert!”

“Lucius!” The colleague, Dr. Albert Roseburg, who had alerted my father to this mysterious discovery, approached with a wave of his hand.

They embraced warmly, and my father introduced Harry.

“And of course you remember my son, Draco. He’s grown a bit since we last saw you.”

He hugged me, appraising my height in that way adults love to do when they haven’t seen you for a few years. We followed him to the edge of Lake Garda, the water a pure, sparkling cerulean that was even more eye-catching than the ruins. Dr. Roseburg picked up a bronze arm with turquoise ridges of oxidation all along the length of it, and handed it to my father.

“Lucius! Come here!” Dr. Roseburg called to him as he stepped into the water and began to tug a small boat to shore. Harry took the arm from him, and I extended my hand, smiling bashfully.

“Tregua?”

Harry held out the arm, its metal fingers extended toward me. We both laughed as I wrapped my fingers around the hand and gave it a firm shake. Harry held the arm up to his ear and pretended to listen very intently.

“I don’t speak statue, but I think he’s saying he agrees to your truce.”

“Very gracious of him, being a statue and all.”

“Indeed. You should let him know you appreciate it.”

_Please let me show you how much I appreciate you. Everything about you._

We all piled in the boat, and the motor purred to life.

“The ship went down in 1827 on the way to Isola del Garda. Gossip has it this statue was a gift from Count Lechi to his lover, contralto Adelaide Malanotte,” Father explained as the small motorboat approached the diving site. “There are four known statues, after the Praxiteles originals. This fellow should be number three. The Emperor Hadrian had a pair, dug up at Tivoli, but one of the more philistine of the Farnese popes melted them down and had them recast as a particularly voluptuous Venus.”

As we came upon the spot, three divers emerged from the crystalline water, the statue rising from the depths like a divine birth, the waves licking at the blue-tipped bronze of the naked male figure, sunlight gleaming around it like a halo.

When we brought it to shore and the crowd diminished to the three of us, my father smiled and nodded to Harry.

“Try a _Revelio_.”

Harry obeyed, and several lines within the statue began to glow.

“What is that?” I asked in hushed awe. It was an alluring sparkle that seemed to hum ever so slightly.

“Count Lechi was a wizard. The four statues are said to be imbued with healing properties that, when combined, create a sort of magical seal between them, the statues positioned at four specific points to form a square. Within that protective square, a state of suspended animation could be achieved, a preservation that would allow the person to stay alive but with none of the atrophy associated with a coma. The potions and healing magic were designed to be restorative as the person remained in this state, ensuring they would be healthy when finally waking.”

“Is it true or just a myth?” Harry asked, stroking the singing lines of the statue reverently.

“We can’t be sure. As you can see, the glimmer is faint. The magical signature has certainly taken some damage from being underwater for so long, and with one statue missing and the recasting of the other two… we’re not sure if we can ever restore them to properly replicate whatever effect they once had. People are hard at work testing the recast pair right now, but it remains to be seen. Still… quite fascinating, isn’t it?” My father lifted his head and beamed at me, his platinum hair falling in his eyes.

“Do they know why he was making these?” I asked, tracing my fingers where Harry’s had just been.

“They’re not certain. All of his correspondence from that time is very guarded… much of it written in code and veiled phrases. Some think it was for a version of immortality. Some believe he had a very sick loved one whom he wanted to keep alive while they searched for a cure for the person’s illness. He was very private. It’s hard to say.”

“Teaching Muggles, studying the ways your Muggle disciplines intersect with magic… you get more done in a day than I do in an entire term, Professor. How do you do it?” Harry asked with a chuckle.

“He just chains himself to the books. Only comes up for air and food,” I playfully responded. Father ruffled my hair and kissed my forehead.

“Cheeky boy. Let’s go for a swim before we leave, shall we? This day is a vision, isn’t it?”

“It absolutely is,” Harry agreed, looking at me and only me, his green eyes large and lovely behind the clear glass of his spectacles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Is he hitting on her? 
> 
> Are they doing it, then?
> 
> What do I know?
> 
>  
> 
> Btw, basically all the foreign language stuff, with the exception of a couple small bits, was lifted from the film's script so _hopefully_ should be accurate!


	3. Chapter 3

The next day, I was submerged in summer ennui, playing bits of piano and lamenting the heat, wandering about the empty house. The rhythmic thump of the entryway door echoed through the hallway as it fell back on its hinges, the wind blowing it forward and back yet again, over and over.

I walked up the stairs to my room and paused when I saw that Harry’s door was open. Mafalda had laid a neat pile of freshly laundered clothes, folded and stacked, on the edge of his bed. I traced the doorframe with my fingers and debated whether or not to enter. Stepping one foot across the threshold, I tested the floor, daring it to squeak and alert someone to my presence, and then walked inside. I paced the room, looking for some clue about Harry’s life, his feelings about me, his feelings about _anything_ , a secret part of him I could uncover and clutch to my breast like a stuffed animal. Maybe the knowledge would ease away some of this deep ache. Or maybe it would only add to my obsession. After all, what could really sate me where Harry was concerned?

I picked up a book from the nightstand and read the spine: _Linguistics in Contemporary European Incantations and the Implications of Cultural Exchange._ I opened the book and a photograph slipped out.

Three people were in the picture. A handsome, bespectacled man with dark hair who looked very similar to Harry and a smiling woman with vibrant red hair and vivid green eyes were standing on either side of what looked like a young Harry, aged ten or eleven. He was small and adorable, wearing a crooked smile, his hair infinitely messier than his adult self. It was endearing to see him so young and awkward. I often found it hard to imagine him as anything but fully grown and confident. It was a wizarding photo, a couple seconds of motion repeating on a loop, his mother’s hand descending on his shoulder, his father’s fingers running through his disheveled hair.

Something else was peeking between two pages, the light blue lines and ripped edge of a sheet of spiral notebook paper. I plucked it out and unfolded it, reading Harry’s crowded script.

_We must ask ourselves what we aren’t letting_ in _by attempting to keep something else_ out _. There is a cost to secrecy, a high price to pay that people such as my parents know firsthand. The grave circumstances of the past are doomed to repeat themselves if our ideas and policies on certain subjects are not reviewed with the intent to reform. What do we lose by rejecting even the mere possibility of cooperation with the Muggle world? What innovations have been lost to time by this stringent need for separation? What great achievements, what advancements in medicine, in magic, in the understanding of the human condition, have not come to fruition because of a stubborn need to shield people from the knowledge of our existence? It feels rather archaic to me, like overgrown children who parrot the empty excuses of “tradition” and the parental refrain of “because I said so” when the topic is broached._

Smiling to myself, I ran my fingers over the hurried pencil of his words, the little smudges on the loops of his “y”s and “g”s, the abrupt way he crossed his “i”s instead of affixing a dainty dot above them, as though he had neither the time nor patience for dots.

I tucked both the photograph and the paper back into the book and set it on the nightstand. His red swim trunks were hanging on the wooden knob of the bedpost. I picked them up and stroked the dry nylon before bringing it to my nose, inhaling the scent of river water and sweat, searching for hints of that heady musk of his I’d come to know.

I shucked off my own shorts and put on the trunks, the waistband struggling to stay on my narrow hips, the material puffed out around my slim thighs. I lay down on the bed and ran my hand down the front of the trunks, squeezing my soft cock through the fabric. I let out a whimper as I imagined my scent mingling with his, him wearing these after me, his cock laying in the space where mine had. My cock began to fill out. I knew I should stop, but I didn’t want to. I pulled the pillow behind my head and turned my cheek into the cool cloth. I could smell him on it, and it only made me grip myself harder, my sighs turning to soft moans.

Downstairs, the entryway door closed, and I heard muffled voices. I shot up, my hand flying away as I recognized Harry’s voice. I threw the trunks off and placed them back on the bedpost, grabbing my own shorts and running back to my room, not putting them on until I’d carefully closed the door.

I walked out onto the second floor balcony a moment later and saw his retreating back, a book in hand as he headed toward the river. I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or disheartened.

 

***

 

Father and I were sitting on the couch as the rain pattered against the windows, the lights flickering in the living room. The old wiring was yet another thing he refused to fix with magic.

“It’s rather romantic, isn’t it? During a great, window-shaking storm, we get to huddle over candlelight and enjoy one another’s company,” he’d insist with a wry smile as I rolled my eyes.

“Have you seen my _Heptameron_?” my mother asked as she ran her long fingers down the bookshelf. “Ah! Here it is. It’s in German. I’ll translate. This isn’t where we left off, but I think you’ll enjoy this one.”

She sat down next to my father, and I draped myself across their laps in a way I hadn’t done in a long time, my head on my mother’s knee and my back on top of my father’s legs. She ran her fingers through my hair as she read, and my father stroked my arm.

“A handsome young knight is madly in love with a princess. She too is in love with him, though she seems not to be entirely aware of it. Despite the friendship that blossoms between them, or perhaps _because_ of that very friendship, the young knight finds himself so…” she paused, softly rereading the German under her breath, her forehead wrinkled in concentration, “humbled and speechless that he is totally unable to bring up the subject of his love. Until one day, he asks the princess point-blank: _Ich bitte euch ratet mir was besser ist... reden oder sterben._ ‘Is it better to speak or to die?’”

She looked down at me, her voice and her gaze unbearably soft, the rolling thunder a reassuring rumble outside the walls of the house.

I’d always loved thunderstorms. When I was a child, I used to hide under trees to watch them, much to my parents chagrin. They would drag me away, reminding me about lightning strikes and how trees were dangerous to be near, but still I would find my way back to one during every storm. There was never a more pacifying place to be than underneath the canopy of a hardy, ancient tree, the earth growing soft and muddy around me, the pelt of the raindrops against the leaves reverberating like the most melodious song. The whip crack of the thunder would beat against my heart like a drum, the purple and white lightning like a powerful knife slashing into the sky. I would sit with my bare toes sinking into the moistening soil, back pressed to the trunk of a tree, eyes peering up at the water pouring from the heavens, and feel completely at peace.

Since then, my storm ritual had shifted to sitting on a windowsill indoors and devouring a good book, a steaming mug of tea beside me as I took breaks to watch the rain, but I still loved thunderstorms. The clap of the thunder and the heaviness of the air always seemed to shake something deep within me, to remind me of life and love and yearning in a way nothing else had. Nothing else until Harry showed up, anyway.

The flickering lights faded into darkness, the soft classical music on the wireless clicking off suddenly.

“I’d never have the courage to ask a question like that,” I confessed quietly.

“I very much doubt that,” my father said. Silence enveloped us, the cadence of the rain filling the room. “My little dragon… you do know that you can always talk to us?”

He looked at me, that sagacious tenderness in his eyes, and I wondered how much he saw. He’d always been hard to hide from, the two of us so alike in disposition, stoic yet silly. We retreated deep into our contemplative selves when the mood cast over us like a widow’s vigil shroud, but bubbled up with smiles and zealous appetites for life when the fog drifted away. We even looked alike, our striking silver eyes, shocks of white-blond hair, and thin frames always causing people to remark on how I resembled a miniature version of him. He knew when I was overtaken by these swarms of emotion, but surely he couldn’t know the cause.

How could anyone see this marrow-deep ache for what it was? I barely recognized it myself. Some days, it felt like a heavy cross on my back, slanting my gait with its pressing weight, but I thought I concealed it well enough, hiding my passion in self-loathing scribbles and solitary piano compositions.

He couldn’t know.

I looked at my mother, warm and ruddy-cheeked as always, her honey-colored hair cascading over her shoulders like waterfalls of summer wheat. She smiled and continued to push my hair back from my forehead like I was ten years old again and inconsolable over the pain of a skinned knee. How different from that boy did I seem now? What did she see when she looked at me?

“We love you, Draco. We’ll always be here for you. No matter what you need,” she told me in that mollifying voice, her words flowing out like music.

I nodded and closed my eyes, letting the sound of the rain wash over me, her gentle hand still in my hair.

 

***

 

I sat in a chair under a tree, my sheet music open on my lap and a ripe apricot in my fist. I turned the fruit over and over in my hand, my fingers skating across the fine fuzz, the plump seam running down one side of the flesh.

Harry sat on the edge of the pool a few paces away, his back to me, his bare feet splashing in the water. He was wearing that blue Oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. I had the sudden urge to submerge myself in the pool and lovingly wash his feet, taking fastidious care with every crevice and curvature. For what was far from the first time, I felt certain I was sick. Whatever affliction I had was decidedly abnormal and concerning.

“My mother is reading this German romance. She read some of it to Father and me the day the lights went out.”

“About the knight who doesn’t know whether to speak or to die?”

“Yes.” I leaned forward and watched him closely. “You’ve read it?”

“No. Narcissa told me about it. I can’t do much reading for pleasure these days. Too much work to be done,” he sighed, raising his arms above his head in a long stretch, slowly rolling his neck from side to side.

How many conversations went on in this house that I didn’t know about?

“Well, does he speak or doesn’t he?”

“The princess tells him it’s better to speak, but he doesn’t.” I squeezed the apricot in my hand, feeling the give in the walls of it, the ripeness at its peak.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know… fear, I suppose? Same reason we don’t do anything we should.”

He turned his head and smiled at me, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses again.

“What?”

“You’re being very pleasant today,” he remarked, his smile morphing into a devious smirk.

“I’m always pleasant,” I retorted, falling back into my chair with an irritated groan.

“Is that so?”

I glared at him and opened my mouth to hurl an insult his way, but then he laughed, the sincerity of the sound like a tranquilizer injected straight into my bloodstream. How did he always manage that?

“I have to go into town. Need to pick up some things.” He didn’t move after he said it, watching me expectantly. I called upon my thudding pulse to slow down.

“I could go for you!” I said a bit too loudly. “I mean… if you want me to. If you’re busy, and it would save you some time, you could just tell me what y — ”

“Let’s go together.” He rose from the edge of the pool with an agile hop and closed the distance between us, his muscular thighs mere inches from my bony knees.

“Right now?”

“Are you telling me you have something better to do?” He cocked an eyebrow, and I almost fell back into my default defensiveness.

“No. Let’s go.” I got up from my chair and followed him to our bikes.

 

***

 

I was standing in front of the memorial, the craggy mound of stone designed to look like the rubble of the aftermath of the battle. It was a rough-edged mountain that grew smaller at the top, a statue of a soldier with a small boulder on his back perched at the apex.

Harry came up behind me and handed me an open pack of Gauloises. An unlit cigarette was already dangling from the corner of his lovely mouth. I pulled one from the proffered pack and leaned in as he flicked a lighter to life, cupping a hand around the flame to protect it from the breeze. It was the nearest I’d been to him, his fingers only a couple of inches from my mouth. I lingered for a second longer than necessary, puffing on the cigarette until the tip glowed burnt orange, clouds of opaque smoke billowing from my mouth.

Harry lit his and exhaled without coughing. I tilted my head. It was the first time I’d seen him smoke. When the rest of us were inhaling like the European bohemian clichés we were, he always refused.

“I thought you didn’t smoke?”

“I don’t,” he said with an enchanting smile. “Italy is sinking its claws into me. Too many nights drinking grappa with Romano and Lorenzo around a card table.”

“You drink grappa? That’s disgusting.” I made a face, and he chuckled, leaning next to me on the iron railing that covered the perimeter of the memorial.

“This is World War II?” Harry bent down to read the plaque affixed to the railing.

“World War I,” I corrected.

“I’ve never even heard of the Battle of Piave. I don’t know much about the first World War.”

“The Battle of Piave is one of the most lethal battles of World War I. 170,000 people died.” I stood back and surveyed the memorial, the azure sky stretching high and clear above it, the soldier at the top looking like he might step off and scale the air at any moment, ascending into the clouds. Just beyond it was a church with a turquoise turret weathered from time, the color stripped in irregular patches, a crucifix jutting from the middle of it.

“Is there anything you don’t know? You know more about Muggle history than any wizard I’ve ever met… and I’ve met some very knowledgeable wizards.”

My heart soared at the note of admiration in his voice.

“I don’t know that much. My father knows far more than I.”

“Maybe, but I don't think you know how rare that is. Most wizards… they’re too arrogant to reach across the aisle and learn how the other half lives. They think it’s beneath them, not realizing just how ignorant that makes them. It taints everything.”

I turned to look at him, but his gaze was still focused on the top of the memorial, his sunglasses shielding his eyes.

“Not very sensible of them. We all make the same mistakes, Muggle or wizard. This is proof right here.” I gestured to the memorial, and he smiled.

“Quite right. See? You know more than you think you do.”

“If only you knew how little I know about the things that matter…” I murmured, leaning closer until our arms pressed together.

_To speak or to die._

He slowly swiveled his head in my direction.

“What _things_ that matter?” His voice grew quiet, a pitch of confidentiality that made a thrill rush up my spine.

“You know what things,” I said, forcing the words to come out strong and definitive instead of tremulous and uncertain. I continued to lean into him, the heat of his bicep against mine causing my heart to flutter, my pulse pounding in my ears. The silence stretched on, the eternal seconds ticking off, the concept of time melting into something surreal and immeasurable.

“Why are you telling me this?” he finally spoke, a sigh on his lips that I couldn’t determine the source of. Was he exasperated with me? Did he think I was a naive child he should pat on the head, dismissing my desires as fleeting and frivolous?

_I am a sizzling wire that scorches everything in its path. Stop me before I turn it all to cinders. Please._

I wanted to confess these mad sentiments, but what would he think? I already thought myself deranged and hopelessly incurable, sanity far from my reach. So I was brief. Mysterious. Enticing, I hoped. It seemed the only way to prevent disaster, for once I began to spill, I knew I would flood the entire world with my manic words.

“Because I thought you should know… because I wanted you to know?” I cursed the hesitance tinging my question, but it was hard to stay composed. I was always one step away from quivering and dropping to my knees around him.

“Because you wanted me to know…” he uttered slowly, as though considering each word. He sucked on his cigarette and repeated it again, softer this time. “Because you wanted me to know…”

“Yes… you’re the only one I can say this to…”

_You’re the only one I want to say this to._   

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” His voice, low and sultry, contemplative and sweet, shook the very core of me as he pressed his thigh against mine, angling his head until his chin hovered unbearably close to my ear. The exhilaration of the _almost_ , the potential that wafted on the electrical charge between us, siphoned all the air from my lungs.

I looked at him directly for once, no circumvention, no awkward pausing.

“Yes. You know exactly what I’m saying.”

The deafening silence that descended between us made me revert back to the self-conscious state he always produced in me. Had I been wrong? Was I only reading what I wanted into these moments?

“I shouldn’t have said anything,” I declared in a rush of words, eager to correct my misstep.

“Do you want me to pretend you didn’t?”

If only he’d take those damn glasses off. I wanted to see his eyes, to search those flickering pupils for the truth.

“What do _you_ want?”

“Oh, Draco… I’ve never been good at knowing what I want. I’m at my best when people decide that for me.”

He sighed, a chill settling over my bones as he moved away from the railing, robbing me of the warm press of his body.

 

***

 

“This is my spot. It’s all mine.” On the journey back, as we biked the long stretch of paved road that gave way to a rockier gravel path, I’d told him to pull over. We both needed a rest, but mostly I just wanted an excuse to prolong the day, acutely aware of what it would be like when we returned to the house. He would go back to ignoring me, and I would go back to pining like the tragic schoolgirl protagonist of some heady French novel written by old men who knew nothing of longing. I had no desire to return to that. I felt I had severed something between us, killed the burgeoning will of the animal before it could flourish, but perhaps I could stave off the inevitable for another hour. “I come here to read. Think. Just… _be_. Without anyone else. Without interruption.”

I shucked off my shoes and waded into the pond, the chirping of birds and the gentle breeze through the limbs of the surrounding willow trees creating the picturesque atmosphere I wanted to show him, a special part of me I could impart in hopes that it might preserve whatever flicker of attraction he had experienced.

Harry dipped his hand in the water.

“It’s freezing!”

“The spring is in the mountains, the Alpi Orobie. The water comes straight down from there.”

He stepped in cautiously, shuddering as he adjusted to the temperature. He kept his distance from me.

“I like the idea of it… It’s like being in two places at once, on the ground while a bit of the mountains trickle down toward me, clear and cold.” I splashed a bit of water toward him, and he splashed some back with a smile, his tanned foot kicking beneath the surface of the pond.

“I like the way you say things.” Those simple words wrapped around my heart like a caress, squeezing me from the inside. I was rapidly melting, dissolving into the very water in which I stood.

“I don’t say anything particularly profound,” I muttered with a shrug, moving closer to him.

“Why are you always putting yourself down?” He finally took his glasses off, spearing me with fond eyes that gleamed brilliantly in the sun. I couldn’t slow my pulse.

“Trying to beat everyone else to it, I suppose.”

“Are you really that afraid of what other people think of you? You certainly work overtime to convince the world otherwise.” He took a few steps until we were no more than a foot apart.

“Think you know me, do you?” I glared, but as usual, it only made him laugh.

“I know more than you think I do. I’ve been eighteen before, Draco.” He turned away from me, walking toward the edge of the pond.

“Oh yes, a whole four years ago. You have such age and wisdom, Harry. What, are you measuring your life in dog years?” I followed him, kicking one last wave of water his way. It left laces of wetness across the back of his shorts.

“ _Dog_ years?!” He whirled around, his laughter bordering on hysterical.

“What?”

He shook his head and kept laughing, his luscious black curls shaking.

“What?! Why is that so funny?!”

Wordlessly, he led us to a sun-warmed patch of grass above the pond, lying down without gesturing for me to join him. I did anyway, looking up at the drifting clouds and dying for him to speak to me.

“Your parents were the ones who figured out about the Horcruxes… weren’t they?” I couldn’t take it anymore. Normally, silence was a comfort to me, but not around him.

He languidly turned his head, the grass tickling his cheek, and shot me a curious glance, his thick eyebrows knitting together.

“They were. They didn’t do it alone, but yes, they were a large part of it.”

“They went into hiding though, right?”

“We did. My mother was pregnant with me. They couldn’t risk joining the search.” Harry nodded and looked back up at the sky, folding his hands behind his head.

“Did anyone know where you were?”

“My godfather, Sirius. He’s Narcissa’s cousin, you know.”

“I didn’t.” I frowned. How did he always seem to know so much about me? It wasn’t fair.

“Well, now you do.”

“ _We’re_ not related, are we?!” I asked, suddenly stricken with the horrific possibility. After all, there weren’t very many pure-blood families in the wizarding world.

“Do I need to explain to you what a godfather is, Draco?”

“I know what a godfather is, you berk!” I ripped a handful of grass from the ground and tossed it at him. “I’m just making sure there aren’t any other little family tree connections I don’t know about.”

“No. You’re safe from incest with me.” He chuckled, and my face went florid.

Suddenly, Harry sat up. His eyes fixed on a small frog that was sitting near his feet. He scooped the little green animal into his palm and, with his free hand, pulled his wand from his back pocket. He transfigured the frog into a large, brown toad.

“Why’d you do that?” I sat up on my elbows, and his face fell when he saw my expression.

“I don’t know. Just messing about. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.” He quickly turned the toad back into its original form and set it back down. It hopped away with a ribbit.

“Transfiguration on animals feels cruel to me. An unsuspecting frog is turned into something else, and we don’t know how he feels about it. We just laugh like it’s all in good fun, but what does his body feel like when that happens? Is he scared? He doesn’t know he’ll be turned back in only a moment’s time, does he?”

“I never thought of it that way.” He shuffled closer and gazed at me affectionately. My skin burned under his eyes. “You’re a sensitive soul, Draco.”

“No, I’m not,” I protested.

“Yes, you are. You don’t want people to know it, but you are.”

“Stop it,” I grumbled, crossing my arms and flopping onto my back.

“I like it. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about.” He lay down next to me, his eyes falling closed. His head tilted toward my shoulder, the tips of his unruly strands of hair just barely brushing my t-shirt. “You rarely ever use magic.”

“We’re prudent wizards. Father doesn’t believe in being frivolous with it, and I don’t either. Isn’t being a person complicated enough without mucking it up with magic?” It was the most we’d spoken all summer, our conversation no longer curtailed by my need to be churlish. He made me feel so damn unmoored. I stared back at him intensely, trying to gauge whether or not my rambling was a better strategy than my usual prickliness. His line of sight shifted to my mouth, his own lips parting slightly, and I decided I’d do whatever I could to make sure he kept looking at my mouth like that. “I love this.”

“What?” 

“Everything,” I breathed, reflexively moistening my lips. His eyes cast upward to meet mine.

“Us?” he whispered.

“Mmm… it’s not bad,” I replied with a shrug, trying my hardest to project indifference.

He laughed, a deep, rumbling sound I wanted to swallow whole. He stretched a long forefinger toward me, and, painstakingly slowly, he brought it to my mouth, tracing every inch of my lips with the tip of his finger. I let out a tiny whimper and licked across the pad of his finger. The throb between my legs spread through my entire body, a spell of fire enchanted into my veins. I closed my eyes and listened to the birds, the frog still singing his throaty tune nearby. I could hear Harry breathing, and I wanted to pull him on top of me so I could feel the rise and fall of his chest too.

“You have the most perfect mouth I’ve ever seen,” he confessed. I drew in a breath, intent to speak but completely unsure of what would fall out of my mouth. No words came, but then he sealed our lips together, sucking every thought, every sigh, every beat of my pulse into the wet heat of his mouth. It was feathery soft and over all too soon.

I opened my eyes, and he was alarmingly close. I could see a nearly invisible ring of blue on the inside of his green irises, his lashes long and dark as they fluttered against the top of his cheeks. He put a few inches of distance between us, the mischief in his eyes declaring _that’s all I’m going to give you. If you want more, you’ll have to take it from me._

I leaned forward and pressed the tip of my tongue to the center of his bottom lip, lingering there for a moment, basking in the pressure of his skin on mine, tracing the infinitesimal lines of his mouth. I licked upward, my tongue swiping across the middle of his upper lip, and I felt the curve of his mouth as he smiled. He placed a firm hand on the nape of my neck and pulled me in, kissing the corner of my mouth so gently, like he was afraid I might run if he moved too fast. Carefully, so slowly I thought I might perish, he covered my lips with kisses, working his way across my mouth as though testing to see how we might fit together, each graze of his lips like a new gesture of some kind, a succession of first kisses that left me ravenous.

He pulled away with a shake of his head and a small smile.

“Better now?” He sat up and slung his arms around his knees.

I lunged at him, straddling his lap and kissing him like I could stop time if only I refused to break contact. He stiffened at first but then yielded to me, his mouth opening to accept my tongue, his hands encircling my hips in a steadfast grip I never wanted to end. Every swipe of his tongue felt like a warm stroke across the length of my entire body, a surge of arousal that was nearly intolerable. I had been right about one thing: getting what I wanted provided no relief. His kiss didn’t slake my appetite. It was a river leading to an ocean, but I was content to drown.

Suddenly, he pulled back again, holding me in place and out of reach with a staunch shake of his head. With startling ease, he maneuvered me off his lap and deposited me beside him.

“What’s wrong?”

“We shouldn’t do this.”

“Why?” I was breathless, elated, agitated, and confused all at once. My head was a cluttered mess.

“You’re young, and I… don’t particularly think Lucius would be happy that he took me in only to…” Harry slid a hand through his hair and pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut.

“I don’t think he particularly cares who I kiss, and why do you keep speaking to me like you’re fifty years old and I’m eleven?! It’s patronizing.” I groaned and sat up, watching the waves of grass and tall weeds swaying in the wind.

“Okay, forget that part then, but... I’m only here for a little while longer.” He cast a pleading glance my way.

“And your point is?”

“I know myself,” he said with a tired tint to his voice. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

I glowered at him and his strange presumption of what feelings he might stir in me. I was tired of his constant assertion that he knew everything, even if it had proved to be uncannily true so far. I clamped my hand over his groin, my fingers squeezing around the shape of his balls and his soft cock through the thin cotton of his shorts, and steeled my grey eyes into what I hoped was solid determination.

“Am I offending you?”

“You snarky little shit,” he intoned with a laugh, finally abandoning whatever somber pretense had consumed him.

“You like me that way,” I said, pride swelling within me at the realization.

“Oh, you’ve finally figured that out, have you?” He grinned as he placed his hand over mine, lacing our fingers together. He kept it there for a moment before prying my hand away and dropping it back into my lap. “I’m sorry, Draco… just trust me on this. It isn’t a good idea.”

Without waiting for a response, he stood up and walked away.


	4. Chapter 4

Marco and Elena, a couple Father knew from the art history department of the University of Milan, had dropped by for dinner and an overnight stay. Our house tended to be a revolving door for colleagues in the summer, everyone popping in for lively discussion that continued until the alcohol ran out and everyone was too tired to keep up their end of the conversation. They were speaking in rapid fire Italian that I could barely follow, ranting about the Italian government’s flaws and the death of their area of study. 

I caught Harry’s eye, and we both struggled not to laugh as Elena threw gruff questions my mother’s way and promptly talked over her before she could even attempt to answer.

“E tu non dici niente?!*” Elena turned to my father and demanded. Father opened his mouth, but Elena and Marco had already moved on, ranting about the tragedy of Bunuel’s death and what it meant for modern cinema to lose such a genius. I raised an eyebrow at my father, and he hid a grin behind his napkin.

“Tu conosci Bunuel?” Marco asked, pointing at me with a stern finger, plowing ahead when I didn’t provide my answer fast enough.

Bored of their quest to out-intellectualize each other, I bumped my foot against Harry’s shin under the table. When he looked at me, his eyes widening dubiously, I expected him to bat my foot away, but he didn’t. Instead, he smiled at me, his calf creeping closer as my foot made its way down his leg, coming to rest on top of his own.

I glanced around the table, and no one appeared to be the wiser. I tucked into my semifreddo as Marco commanded Harry to give his opinion on Bunuel. Once again, it hardly mattered that he didn’t respond; Marco was barrelling ahead much too quickly to care.

I felt a warm trickle above my upper lip and wiped it away with my napkin. When I looked at the cloth, I gasped at the cluster of crimson dots. I pressed the napkin against my nose, preparing for the gush of fresh blood.

“Ma che succede?**” I heard Elena frantically call in my direction as I left the table.

“Non ti preoccupare, succede sempre!” my mother assured her.

“Mafalda, ghiaccio?” I asked as I walked into the kitchen. Seeing the bloody napkin pinched below my nose, she hurriedly walked to the freezer, scooped some ice into a clean napkin, and handed it to me.

“Grazie.” I jogged to the living room and settled in the wooden nook at the back of the room where Father kept all his bar accoutrement. I sank to the floor and tilted my head back, pressing the ice-filled cloth to my nose.

“Draco?” I heard Harry call a few seconds later, the soft shuffle of his footsteps approaching.

“Over here!” I answered, and he appeared around the doorway, spotting me and walking toward the nook. I lowered the soiled napkin, clutching it in my fist. “Sit with me. Please?”

“If you insist,” he said with a flirtatious smile. He sat down next to me in the crowded area, his legs brushing against my feet. “That wasn’t my fault, was it?”

He waved to indicate the napkin in my hand.

“No. It just happens sometimes. Pansy likes to joke that I’m a Victorian woman of frail constitution. Constantly coming down with the vapors and the consumption.”

He laughed, the sound of it soothing me. I loved the way the skin around his eyes crinkled when he smiled. He seemed to smile with every inch of his face, his eyes and mouth so expressive, it made my chest tight. I was glad to see his spectacles were back on, no need to guess at his demeanor under the cover of shades.

Much to my surprise, he picked up one of my bare feet and gently laid it across his lap, beginning to massage the arch in a rather painful way.

“Ow! What in the bloody hell are you doing?” My leg jerked in his grasp but didn’t entirely retract. I was too keen on absorbing his every touch, no matter how uncomfortable it was. I braced my hand on his shoulder and squeezed to offset the ache. When he didn’t discourage me, I began to rub small circles into his shoulder and neck, my daring fingers slipping under the collar of his shirt.

“Sirius used to do this for me when I was little. When I was sick, it would help. Maybe it’s just a distraction thing, but I promise it works.” He released my foot and reached for the other. My hand plunged further into his shirt, fingering the locket he nearly always wore.

“Where’d you get this?”

“My father. It has a picture of my parents and me in it. Before they had decided to go into hiding, he and Sirius were trying to destroy one of the Horcruxes. It was Slytherin’s locket, and when they got it open…” Harry’s hands paused, just cradling my foot, and I felt like the luckiest boy on Earth. “It preyed on his fears, flooding his head with images of all the worst things he could imagine. Losing my mother, losing me… after he destroyed it, that’s when they decided to go into hiding. At first, my mother told him he should do what needs to be done, that she would understand if he felt the need to help put an end to it all, that she knew how important it was. After all, it was the fate of the entire wizarding world. Not a light matter.”

I smiled sadly, reservedly, and waited for him to continue, stroking my fingers down the patch of chest hair underneath his locket. I intended to keep my hands on him for as long as he would let me. Somehow, I expected the hair to be coarse, but it was soft and downy. I’d never touched another man’s chest like that. He seemed so placid and unconcerned as I did it, like it was an insignificant touch instead of the earth-shattering milestone it was for me. I wondered how many beautiful men and women had touched him in this way. I wondered if they knew just how sacred an honor it was. 

“Anyway, after that, he changed his mind. He was furious with himself for even contemplating the risk in the first place, and they decided to go into hiding. When I turned thirteen, he gave me this locket and told me he’d thought himself invincible at that time, that youth has a dangerous hubris to it that I should be aware of, that family and the people you love are the most precious gifts we’re given.” He lifted my foot to his mouth and planted a tender kiss near the ankle. I blushed fiercely, and I didn’t bother with being embarrassed by it this time.

“Do you think we’re cowards?”

He gave me a puzzled look, lips pursing slightly.

“My parents left during the war. They didn’t stay to help. I don’t know if you…” I tapered off, my eyes focusing on the locket, my fingers turning the pewter oval this way and that.

“I know a bit. I would argue that it’s the opposite of cowardly. The pure-blood ideology was more tenacious back then. Your family was rich and powerful. Leaving that standing in the wizarding community… your father breaking away from his parents… it was unheard of at the time.” Harry placed his hand over mine, bringing it to his lap and entwining our fingers. “Exceptional circumstances call for exceptional decisions, don’t you think?”

“Still… you don’t think it’s selfish? Disloyal to who we are? _What_ we are? Considering everything that was at stake?” I scooted closer, my knees angling toward him, my thigh touching his hip. I wanted to crawl into his lap, wanted his long arms to envelop me until we fused together.

“Was it selfish of my parents to go into hiding when they found out my mother was pregnant with me?”

“They did so much before then though.”

“Why are you thinking about this?” He stroked his thumb across my wrist, running it along a large vein, sky blue and thick as a rubber band, and I swore I could feel my pulse jump through my skin into his, trying to sync to his rhythm, trying to force my way inside of him. I thought about the blood dripping from my nose only minutes ago and imagined what it might be like to sink my teeth into the thin skin of his wrist, painting my lips with the crimson of his blood like a garish smile, drinking from the very fountain of his lifeforce. For the hundredth time that summer, I felt certain there was something very, very wrong with me, something gnarled and sickly. But the realization didn’t stop the heady rush of obsession, nor did it stop the thickening of my cock.

You _make me think about it. You make me wonder about so many things I never gave a passing thought before._

“Heroism isn’t always about dashing acts that garner a lot of press, you know? There are plenty of unsung heroes who helped defeat Voldemort. People might not speak of them as much, the parts they played may have been less glamorous than death-defying feats, but they were still essential. They still changed history.” He brought my wrist to his mouth and kissed it, the very tip of his tongue touching it so briefly I questioned if it had happened at all.

“I don’t know that father is changing history by studying musty artefacts.” I laughed softly and leaned my head against his shoulder.

“Well, that’s not the sort of thing you can know just yet. It remains to be seen. And anyway, he’s happy doing what he does. That’s what matters. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a man so thrilled by his work.”

“You mean you’ve never seen such feats of nerd-dom in a grown man,” I corrected. He laughed, and I felt the rumble through my cheek.

“Gives me hope that I might be that excited by something someday.”

“You’re not excited by your work? You write with a lot of… conviction,” I murmured into his shoulder. I boldy kissed the base of his neck and eagerly devoured the pleased hum he made.

“You’re too kind to me.”

“I think you need to reevaluate your definition of that word.”

“Why are you so stubborn? Just let me compliment you.” He tickled my ribs, and I squirmed delightedly.

“I will… when it’s _true_.”

He lifted my chin, forcing our eyes to meet.

“Draco…” he whispered.

He said my name with such smoky sensuality, crooning it like a seductive femme fatale. I stared at his lips, ruby petals I wanted to curl upon, sleep against their warm plush curves for all eternity.

I answered with his own name, uttering it like a zealous prayer, like the ecstasy of Jesuits flogging themselves into religious rapture, starvation leaving them high and euphoric, phantom visions of heightened pleasure dancing before their bloodshot eyes. And much like those devotees, I didn’t care if my idol was false or this rapturous state was some glorious hallucination. All I needed were those lips crushed upon mine, whispering into my mouth, filling my lungs with my own name like it was the only word that meant anything to him, the only vow worth taking.

“You’re going to make things very difficult for me,” he sighed, forlorn and longing. It crushed me into a thousand beautiful pieces.

“Draco? Stai bene, mio piccino?”

We separated as my mother’s footsteps drew closer to the living room, but I wished we could remain there, slotted together on the floor, for the rest of the summer.

 

***

 

I went swimming by the river, nearly everyone clumped on the grassy bank or wading in the blue-green water. Pansy kept looking at me but would avert her eyes anytime I tried to meet her gaze. I thought about talking to her, but I had no idea what I would say. Any viable explanation for my distance would lead to Harry, and I didn’t want to hazard the risk. Something acidic and nauseating twisted within my stomach when I thought about speaking of it, admitting aloud what was churning through me every minute of every day.

I dunked my head under the river, submerging myself for a good long while, gasping for air as I came up, a swish of water falling off my shoulders. I spied Maria, Chiara, Alessandro, Pansy… everyone but Harry. When Pansy moved far enough away from the group, skipping off into the wooded area with Maria, I asked Chiara if she’d seen Harry. She gave me a petulant look and shook her head.

“Don’t ask _me_ ,” she replied with a roll of her eyes.

 

***

 

“Have you seen Harry?” I walked up to my mother, joining her on the bench outside. She was wearing that floppy, wide-brimmed hat of hers, the one that reminded me of high society English garden parties, the kind she probably attended all the time when she was younger. She smiled as I approached, folding her book closed on her lap, her cigarette poised between two slim, elegant fingers.

“Didn’t he go out?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him all day.” I tried to eliminate the quaver of desperation from my voice. Her blue eyes narrowed ever so slightly, her smile dimming to something contemplative.

“You like him, don’t you?”

"Everyone likes Harry. He’s irritatingly likable.”

She chuckled and crossed her legs at the knee, inhaling a lungful of smoke and expelling it in a curling, graceful plume.

“I think he likes you too… perhaps more than you do.”

“Is that what you think?” I tilted my head toward her, the boyish bounce of my legs and the hope in my eyes so evident, but I couldn’t help it.

“It’s not what I think. It’s what he told me.” Her smile transformed into something conspiratorial, and I blushed, turning my head before I could smile back. I wanted to avoid confirming anything at all costs, and I was getting the distinct sense that my body was speaking without my permission.

“When did he say that?” I watched Anchise weeding a patch of our herb garden, his gloved hands tossing errant plants over his shoulder.

“A while ago.” She ran a hand through my hair, giving my shoulder a light squeeze.

If that was true, where was he now? Why did he keep reeling me in only to push me away? I knew what _I_ was afraid of, but I couldn’t guess what was troubling Harry.

“Do you think father hates magic? Or just the wizarding world?”

She turned to me with a frown, her mouth open in an astonished “o”.

“I don’t believe either of those things to be the case. Your father isn’t a man who thinks in absolutes. We had our reasons for leaving the wizarding world, but he still studies magical disciplines, does he not? And he’s always taught you everything he knows.”

“I suppose so…” I kicked my feet, the heels of my canvas shoes digging in the dirt.

Father had taught me spells when I was younger, but by the time I reached my mid-teens, we all but stopped practicing magic together. Somewhere along the way, my teenage privacy and Muggle interests had taken precedence, and Father no longer seemed invested in taking the time to integrate magic into my life. Maybe it was just the natural order of things, the constant fluctuation of how and why we need our parents that seems to mirror the drastic peaks and valleys of a rollercoaster when we enter puberty. 

“You’re welcome to ask him about this, Draco. You shouldn’t feel that you can’t talk to him about these things.” She took a thoughtful drag of her cigarette before stubbing it out in a glass ashtray she’d brought outside with her. She never liked to soil the grounds with the detritus of her vices.

_“Nature gives us everything we need without asking for anything in return. Why should we repay that kindness by dumping our refuse wherever we please?”_ she’d once said to me. 

I reclined on the bench, swinging my feet up and tucking them underneath me, resting my head in her lap. She picked up her book and resumed reading, reassuringly petting my hair.

 

***

 

I waited all day, the day fading into night as I leaned against the rough bark of a tree lining the small gravel road that led away from our house. Mafalda walked by me, woven basket in hand as she made her way home for the night. I asked if she’d seen Harry and received the same refrain I’d heard all day; the song had grown monotonous now, but it still filled me with a sharp pain. Where was he?

The wind picked up, those warm summer whirls that always felt so contradictory, like someone grabbed a part of winter and deposited in the middle of July, the humid air containing all the chafing fierceness of January in its gusts. I listened to the leaves shaking above me, the bowing of the branches as the wind tested their shape.

Every sound seemed to whip into a frenzy, the normally placating chorus of cicadas and crickets turning into an atonal cacophony that hurt my ears.

I touched the space on my chest that mirrored where Harry’s locket would hang under the folds of his Oxford shirt, tracing the shape of the oval into my skin again and again. I sat and waited for the crunch of gravel beneath the wheels of a bicycle, the click-click of the spokes spinning in the distance. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the image of them, as though he might sense my yearning, a telepathic message that would make him turn around and come find me.

I sat under the tree until the night became an impenetrable darkness and my eyes grew weary.

 

***

 

My head shot up, startled by the sound of the entryway door slamming. I rubbed the base of my neck and groaned. I’d fallen asleep over my desk, my dim lamp still on, an open book creased from where my arms had fallen on it.

I heard his bedroom door open, and I rushed to my bed, eager to feign sleep lest I reveal that I’d been waiting for his return. He entered the bathroom, and I could hear the rustle of clothes, the teeth of his zipper unspooling as he dropped his shorts. When the sound of urine hitting the basin reached my ears, I sighed. I was so starved for any hint of him that the intimacy of hearing it, knowing he was only a few feet away, his cock visible and vulnerable, made my blood pump thickly between my legs. I wondered what he would do if I ran through the open door right then, sank to my knees on the cold, unforgiving tile and offered my mouth to him, let him plunder it until he was satisfied, his come dripping down my grateful throat while he looked into my eyes. I hoped he would watch me the entire time, his hands in my hair, my name on his lips.

But I didn’t move, my limbs sewn to the bed as I heard him flush and then close the door, effectively shutting my window into our joined space, cordoning himself off from my voyeuristic gaze. 

“Why are you doing this to me?” I whispered to the empty room, turning on my side and curling into myself, knees to my stomach.

“I need you,” I whimpered pathetically, lamenting who I’d become, who he’d driven me to become.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Say something. You’re resigned.
> 
> Do you know Bunuel?
> 
> ** What’s the matter?
> 
> It’s nothing. It happens all the time.
> 
> Draco is asking Mafalda for ice.


	5. Chapter 5

When I woke the next day, it was lunchtime. I’d always been a night owl, but I’d exhausted that stamina waiting for Harry to return. When rest finally came, it was the sleep of the dead: deep, long and undisturbed.

Just like the previous day, Harry was gone, seemingly no one able to tell me where he’d slipped away to. I spent the hours employing every distraction I’d ever enjoyed, but nothing seemed to work. All the things I’d grown accustomed to immersing myself in, my music, my books, the gorgeous grounds surrounding me, were no longer helpful. Every note on the piano sounded like his voice or the variations on Bach that I’d played for him. Every word of a book suddenly made me draw parallels to my own interminable longing. Every ripened fruit and sparkling pool on the property called to mind his sun-ripened skin and lean form lounging on the grass like a contented cat.

After dinner, I stalked up to my room and, anxiety-fueled and lust-drunk, began to scribble a note.

_Please don’t avoid me. It kills me._

With an anguished groan, I crumpled the page and tossed it into the bin by my desk. I started again.

_Your silence is killing me. I’d sooner die than know you hate me. I —_

I slammed my fist down on the desk and cringed at my own idiocy.

“Way over the top, you dramatic imbecile,” I muttered to myself, destroying the note and starting fresh once again.

_Can’t stand the silence. I need to speak to you. - DM_

I held the note up to the fading light streaming in from the window, evaluating the shape and meaning of each word. With a jerky nod and a dangerous roiling in my stomach, I walked toward the door that connected our rooms and slipped the note underneath it. I spent the next hour agonizing about whether or not to rush into his bedroom and retrieve the page, cowardly burning it and surrendering the flaky remnants to the wind, but I didn’t.

I lay down in my bed and prayed to every deity that I might be granted a peaceful sleep, a reprieve from my endless thoughts of his smile and his voice and the tufts of hair on his chest. Despite this prayer, I knew that even sleep would only hold dreams of him.

 

***

 

Since mental endeavors no longer served as a suitable distraction, I figured a turn to the physical was worth a try. I embarked on a long bike ride, but when I came back to the house, I was no less frustrated than I had been hours earlier. I found Father and Harry meticulously sifting through slides of sculptures, making notes and too absorbed in their studies to even notice me drifting past the door.

I ran back up the stairs, my heart thumping erratically as I tried to tamp down my hope. I entered my room, my eyes wild as they darted between one object and the next, searching for a glint of — 

There it was. Neatly folded into a square and sitting right on top of my sheet music. My hands shaking, I opened it.

_You have a flair for the dramatic, don’t you? See you at midnight. - HP_

Below the words was a small drawing of a frog on the edge of a pond. It was spelled to move, the frog hopping along the ground as the grass waved in the wind. I kissed the paper, holding it to my lips for a long moment as I sat down on my bed. I grinned and clutched it to my chest, falling backwards until I was sprawled on the mattress, my head spinning like a night ending in too much wine, floating into the clouds, no anchor to hold me to the ground.

Midnightmidnightmidnightmidnight. I chanted it in my head until it seemed to become a part of me, the word to which my every breath corresponded.

I turned my head to check the clock on the nightstand.

10:30 AM.

My elation gave way to a deep, guttural noise of discontent, and I covered my face with a pillow. 

 

***

 

Harry and my father joined us for a late lunch, taking a break from cataloguing the slides to enjoy the fresh air.

“Don’t forget that Xenophilius and Luna are coming for dinner tonight,” Mother reminded me as she poured me some apricot juice.

I heaved a weighty sigh and hung my head in my hands.

“The Lovegoods? I haven’t seen them in ages! They’ve been traveling nonstop for years. It’s all wizarding company tonight!” Harry said brightly, nudging me with an elbow. “Don’t look so put upon, Draco.”

“Darling… I’d like you to wear — ” my mother started, but I cut her off.

“No. Absolutely not. Would rather die. Would rather parade around naked in front of my entire graduating class.”

“Draco, they’ve had a long trip, and we haven’t seen them in almost two years. They’ve never been here before. It would be nice if you — ”

“ _Father_ , stop. Am I twelve?!”

“I don’t know, are you? You behave like it sometimes.”

Harry glanced between my father and me, an amused smirk quirking up at the corners of his mouth. I glowered at him, but it only made the smirk broaden. It was beyond humiliating to be so infantilized in his presence.

“My point is that I thought I’d aged out of the obligatory clothing stage of life. I’m not wearing it. It’s too big, and it makes me look ridiculous, like I’m about to go on tour for a cabaret show where I sing show tunes with backup dancers. I — look, I’ll model it for Harry, okay?” I gestured to him, and he threw his hands up.

“I’m not getting involved. I respectfully abstain from this parent-child conflict.” He chuckled and set to work on his salad. I ignored his request for impartiality.

“If Harry says I don’t look like I’m auditioning for the gay men’s chorus — ”

“Draco!” my parents said in unison with identical warning looks.

“Even if that were true, what would be wrong with that, exactly?” my father chided, spearing me with scolding eyes.

“Nothing!” I jumped to rectify my mishap. It wasn’t that there _was_ anything wrong with that. I didn’t judge other people for their orientation or the tangible ways they chose to express their identities. I hadn’t been raised to be like that. In fact, rejecting bigotry and teaching that lesson as often as possible had always been paramount to my parents. It was essential to the life my father had chosen, the very reason he’d left his old life behind and escaped from under the thumb of my grandfather.

In those fumbling years, I didn’t always excel at applying that attitude to my own identity. I found myself frantically deflecting all things that might point to the truth before I was ready to reveal it. I was hyper aware of how I presented, always afraid to slip into behaviors that would unmask me. Luna and Xenophilius were a danger to my secrecy. They were so oddly intuitive, and I was convinced that a gift like that shirt was designed to suss me out, to dig up my poorly concealed shame and display it for all to see.

Funny how we can accept in others what we can’t stand in ourselves, isn’t it? I knew I had no discernible reason to feel this undying need to hide, but somehow that knowledge didn’t dissolve the urge. If anything, it only made me hate myself more, made me feel like a failure for not internalizing the acceptance my loving father had taught me. How disappointed would he be to learn that I was flogging myself over something he’d taught me to never be scared of? Why did I make everything so hard?

“Well, if there’s nothing wrong with it, perhaps this conversation has come to its natural conclusion.” Father’s grey eyes remained grave, and I knew better than to argue. I simply nodded, my cheeks burning as I strained my neck to get a peek at my mother’s wristwatch. I didn’t want Harry to know that my patience was already waning. He had enough power over me. It wouldn’t do to give him more.

“Do you need the time, dear?” my mother asked pleasantly, and my face reddened even more. With a flick of her dainty wrist, she looked at the timepiece. “It’s just after two.” 

Under the table, Harry tapped my leg with his foot, smiling into his juice glass. My parents began talking about the preparation for dinner. Harry took the opportunity to lean in and whisper, “Long way to midnight. Think you can make it?”

I clenched my jaw and narrowed my eyes. He winked and stood up.

“I’m going to try to hammer away at the manuscript for a while. I don’t think I’ll be around for dinner, but see you all after?”

“Of course! Get some work done. We’ll see you later, Harry.” Father waved to him as Harry walked toward the house.

I squinted at my mother’s watch.

2:15 PM.

 

***

 

I was torn between spending the day indoors, near a clock at all times so I could obsessively check off the minutes and hours, counting down until the main event of… what exactly? What would happen? What did he _want_ to happen?

Surely he chose midnight for the reason I imagined. Why else would we need to meet so late, the rest of the house dark and quiet, only the two of us awake and… god, I couldn’t languish in anticipation for another eight hours.

I did a loop through the house. Perhaps I could help Father with something. Maybe he could set me down in front of some dry, insipid task that would focus all of my nervous energy until dinner.

No one was around. Every room was hollow and lifeless, the echoes of my footsteps like the ticking of my bedside clock.

 

***

 

I stepped out onto the lawn, ridiculous Phoenix tail feather adorned shirt and all, and skipped toward Luna before enveloping her in a big hug. I really did like the company of the Lovegoods. They were maddeningly quirky at times, but there was never a dull moment when they were around. They had the kindest hearts of anyone I’d ever met, and I internally apologized to them for what undoubtedly scatterbrained, poor company I would be.

“Draco! Your aura looks so different from the last time I saw you,” Luna observed in that sing-song tone of hers, her eyes dreamy and tender. “You’re on the cusp of something. There’s a deep blue that’s just beginning to spread, but it hasn’t quite blossomed yet.”

“Luna, I love you, but if you could keep all aura related things between the two of us tonight, I’d greatly appreciate it.” I smiled at her, my eyes darting over to my father and Xenophilius. They were embracing warmly, two long-haired, bright-eyed men that looked a bit like long lost brothers.

“Of course, but don’t ever be ashamed of changing. The colour that’s trying to shine through is only you becoming who you’re meant to be.” She cupped my cheek and smiled.

“Thanks, Luna. That’s… strangely comforting.”

“Draco!” Xenophilius walked over, Father beside him, and held out his arms. I hugged him, and when I stepped back, he gripped me by the shoulders, surveying me intently. “Oh my… I see something new has — ”

“Don’t, father,” Luna said with a gentle shake of her head. “Draco doesn’t want to talk about it right now. One of the things I’ve always loved about him is that he’s never too polite to let people know when he doesn’t want to be bothered.”

Father looked at me, one questioning eyebrow raised, and I shrugged.

“Come, let’s go inside! I’m very anxious to hear about all the adventures you’ve been on and the creatures you’ve encountered.” Father ushered us in, a hand at Xenophilius’s back.

“Oh! You can’t imagine! Heliopaths in Argentina! Zouwus in France! I have so much to tell you.”

 

***

 

I did my best to make conversation over dinner, but my eyes kept flitting to the doorway, wondering if Harry would come waltzing in. Luna took notice and mercifully didn’t press me when my eyes would go glassy, my attention wavering anytime someone asked me a question. Father gave me a stern look across the table, and I tried to bat away the fog descending over my mind. I didn’t mean to be so far away, but my single-mindedness was unavoidable.    

We all migrated to the living room, drinks poured as everyone lounged about on the couch and chairs.

“Harry!” Xenophilius cried, and my head whipped around as though pulled on a taut string. “I haven’t seen you since you were very small! Look at you now.”

Harry caught my eye over Xenophilius’s shoulder as they hugged, and the smile we shared went straight to my cock. Is there any gift more scintillating than a surreptitious look across the room with someone you desire so wholly? That moment when your eyes say everything, no need for words, only the smoky tint of a heated gaze, is the most potent love potion of all.

“Sorry to miss dinner. I’m afraid I’ve been rather lax on my dissertation the past couple of weeks. Italy is just too wonderful for words. Hard to hide behind a desk when you’re surrounded by all this beauty.”

“I agree. It’s magnificent. All the creatures sing in harmony here. Have you noticed?”

“Uhh… no, I haven’t.” Harry rubbed the back of his neck and wrinkled his brow. I snickered to myself. Watching people who were unaccustomed to Luna’s eccentricities scramble to parse her meaning was a guaranteed hilarity.

“It all makes perfect sense now, Draco,” Luna said in a low, confidential tone, inclining her head toward mine.

“Oh…” I said, fiddling with my hands in my lap.

“You needn’t worry. I won’t say anything, but I would like to let you know that he clearly feels the same.”

“You’re brilliant, Luna. Do you know that?” I put an arm around her and squeezed.

“Nonsense. I just pay attention. People lose that along the way, you know?”

“Draco, will you play something for us?” Mother cheerily requested, and I nodded with a smile, doing my best to be the pleasant host. Maybe occupying my fingers with the ivory keys would allow me to forget about the countdown to midnight. I doubted it, but anything was worth a try.

“Do you have the time, Narcissa? It’s been a long day squinting at four syllable words. Everything reads like Greek to me now,” Harry said with a chuckle as he sat down next to my mother on the couch.

“Don’t feel obligated to stay up on our behalf, Harry. I’m sure you’re quite tired,” she replied with a kind smile. She tilted her wrist and glanced at her watch.

As I sat down on the piano bench, I gazed at the two of them with a complete lack of subtlety, pretending to shuffle the pages of the open sheet music resting above the keys. Harry grinned at me, and I rolled my eyes, returning my gaze to the piano but still straining to hear their conversation over the rising din of the room. Xenophilius and Father had broken off into a lively discussion about the statue Father had found at the Grottoes of Catullus, and the noise threatened to swallow my mother’s response.

“It’s just after eleven,” she said, and I felt as though a boulder had been lifted off my chest.

An hour.

I could do an hour.

“I promise we won’t be offended if you retire for the night.”

“No no, I wouldn’t miss a chance to hear Draco play. It’s always lovely.”

My head shot up at that, our eyes connecting for a brief, searing moment before my fingers found their place on the keys, the muscle memory guiding me to the correct position. I didn’t really need the sheet music. Once I played a piece a few times, it became a part of me, absorbed in my mind as much as my own thoughts. My parents always spoke of this as though it were a remarkable gift, but it didn’t feel exceptional to me. It was as natural as breathing.

I began to play the first few notes of Poulenc’s “Improvisation N. 15 in C minor,” my eyes falling closed as I sailed into its melancholy beauty, awash in the chord progressions and the images they conjured in my mind. When I played that song, I always pictured a rainy stroll down the Champs-Élysées, two lovers arm in arm as they huddled close under the protection of an umbrella, people around them rushing to the safety of nearby shops, eager to be out of the storm. My mind never sketched in their faces, but I knew they were happy. Content to be ambling down the picturesque street, rain bouncing off the bricks underfoot. They didn’t rush to find cover. Hands linked, they waded through the eye of the storm together.

When I finished, my eyes opening slowly as though waking from a dream, I saw that he was watching me with rapt attention, his lips parted slightly, his eyes admiring in a way that made the entire room fade away. I could hear people clapping and praising me, but it was all muffled and inconsequential. Everything was inconsequential when compared to him.

“I-I think I might head to bed, if that’s all right? I’m tired,” I said, affecting an exaggerated yawn as I looked at my mother.

“Of course, darling. Get some rest,” she agreed.

I said my goodbyes to the Lovegoods and headed to the second floor, resisting the temptation to turn around and see if he was watching me ascend the stairs.

 

***

 

I leaned over the edge of my open window, watching my parents wave goodbye to the Lovegoods as they drove away. My mother and father walked back to the house, Father’s arm around Mother’s waist, both of them rosy-cheeked and merry. I heard the door of the second floor balcony open and turned my head to see Harry walk out onto it, bracing his forearms on the railing, a cigarette between the fingers of his left hand.

I walked out of my room and entered the balcony, one hand circling my wrist as if to subdue my throbbing pulse. He turned toward me with a tentative smile, eyes gleaming in the dark, and I wished I could take a picture of him like this, his expression so fertile with all the moments yet to come. But a photo could never tell the whole story, could never capture my frantic nerves as he looked at me, the backdrop of chirping crickets and sturdy fruit trees enveloping us in the idyllic blanket of Italian summer.

“I’m glad you came,” he softly confessed as I came to stand beside him, my hands gripping the top of the railing. His hand grazed mine, the gentlest gesture of reassurance, his thumb tracing a circle on the back of my hand.

“I’m nervous,” I admitted, the abrupt reality of it all making me dizzy. I wasn’t sure I could let go of the railing and still properly stand.

“Me too,” he whispered.

“I don’t believe you.” I shook my head, but he tilted my chin upward with a long forefinger.

“What do you think this is about?” He smiled, a broad, warm expression that touched every part of me, and lifted his hand to indicate the cigarette.

“Sorry I drove you to nicotine. I’m proving to be very unhealthy for you.” I laughed and shoved my hands in the pockets of my shorts. I suddenly didn’t know what to do with them. No longer clenched around a railing, my fingers just fidgeted at my sides, hungry to touch but unsure if they had the strength to do so.

“Come on.” He tilted his head toward the door and walked off toward the bedroom. I tiptoed behind him, every creak of a floorboard sounding like a screech in the quiet of the house. I’d only ever touched myself in these rooms, never anyone else. No boys or girls were covertly brought to my bed under the cover of night. This distinctly forbidden feeling was new, but, like everything else about him and what he’d awakened in me, it was powerfully addictive.

“I like what you’ve done with the place,” I joked as I entered, feeling instantly stupid. He chuckled and stubbed his cigarette out in an ashtray on the bureau. I leaned my back against the footboard of the bed, my restless hands finding their way around the carved wood. He came to stand beside me, the edges of our fingers touching as he gripped the spot next to me, and I leaned my head against his shoulder, inhaling his intoxicating scent, harsh and untamed like petrichor or the scorch of lightning striking dry earth.

I mouthed at his shoulder through his shirt, partly because I wanted to consume him and partly because I had no idea what to do next. He was here, so very solid and real and wanting, but I was like a starved dog who didn’t know how to savor a meal. I wanted to latch on and devour, no finesse or art in my mad craving. Knowing this made me want to withdraw, afraid I would terrify him with my clumsy desire, disappointing him with ungainly clawing that wouldn’t match the skilled hands of all the lovers he’d had before me.

“Are you okay?” he quietly asked, and I nodded vigorously. I was far from okay, my inner turmoil like a rapidly derailing train, but I knew what he meant.

_Do you still want this? Do you still want me?_

I very much did. Even if it would end in ruin, even if it would crack at the center of me until there was nothing left but fragments I couldn’t piece back together, I knew more than ever that I wanted this. Potential destruction be damned; I wanted him to burn me into nothingness.

“Me okay,” I responded, and he laughed again. His laughter eased away some of my tension, although I still didn’t believe he was nervous in quite the same way I was. How could he be?

With a shaky breath, I moved closer until my head was leaning against his chest, my arms threading around his shoulders. I felt his hands settle in the small of my back, and I hitched my leg up, scaling him like a mountain. We both laughed as we began to topple backwards. He nosed in my neck, and the sound of his inhalation, the notion that he too wanted to breath me in, made an embarrassing whimper escape my lips.

He held my face in his hands, thumbs stroking my heated cheeks, and I couldn’t bear to look away from those enthralling eyes, not when they were finally fixed on me and only me.

“Can I kiss you?”

“Yes, please.” I nodded, my eyelashes fluttering with the weighty attempt to keep them open, the lids far too lust-heavy. As I leaned in, he smiled playfully and shook his head, pulling just out of reach. Instead of meeting my feverish lips, he kissed me everywhere else, his lips tenderly pressing to my hairline, my brow, my cheek. His hands found their way into my hair, curling firmly at the root, tugging with just the right amount of pressure to make me feel like I might dissolve into humid vapor. My own hands dropped to the footboard again, an overpowering need to grip something but a stark fear that I would clutch him so hard I would leave bruises, purple fingerprints all along his perfect hips. By the time he reached my neck, I was panting, the bloom in my cheeks like a well-stoked fire.

When he stepped away to close the door, I was almost grateful. His touch was a wild thrill I hadn’t yet learned how to control. I didn’t know if I ever could. I never seemed to be in command of much of anything around him.

We both realized too late that the door was swinging shut too violently, the thud echoing through the house like a gunshot. I winced, and he covered his mouth to stifle his giggles.

“Sorry. I should have already taken care of this.” He grabbed his wand from the nightstand and began to lock all the doors, setting up silencing charms to ensure our privacy. I blushed at the implications of it. The mere thought of my hands on him giving way to sounds of pleasure, sounds people could hear and understand, seemed impossible.

When he was finished, he sat down on the bed and patted the spot next to him. I sat down, and the silence engulfed us. I wished he would do something to guide me. What is it about beginnings that are so fraught with pressure? The sly smiles in the dark that let you know it’s okay never seem to quell the heart’s palpitations until you finally reach across the divide and say _yes, this is it_ , your hands making the shape of words you can’t give voice to. My foot crept toward his, resting on top of it like it had underneath the table a few days ago. It seemed like weeks ago. So much had happened, so much had changed.

“Does this make you happy?” He placed his other foot on top of mine and leaned in, his shoulder connecting with mine.

“Yes,” I uttered, no more than a breath that vaguely resembled a word.

“You’re not gonna get a nosebleed on me, are you?”

His cheeky teasing woke me from my trance, and my fist playfully collided with his shoulder.

“No, I’m not going to get a nosebleed, you prat.” I climbed into his lap, and our spirited wrestling quickly turned to needy caresses, his hands skating down my back, pulling me nearer until our lips finally crashed together. I moaned into his mouth, high-pitched and unrestrained, the relief of long pent-up need that I couldn’t even measure.

“Get this off,” he gasped with a note of impatience, tugging the hem of my t-shirt upward. I obeyed, and the second my skin was bared, he covered it with kisses, his lips and tongue dragging across my belly, warm, wet and worshipful. I watched him with a naked awe, full of disbelief that he could kiss me like that, could want my body under his mouth as much as I wanted the same. We separated long enough for him to tug his own shirt off, our limbs winding together as soon as they could, both of us groaning from the slide of chest against chest. I wanted to touch all of him, but I didn’t want to lose this sensation for a second, his warm skin lighting a fire within me, yet cooling the sharp swell of yearning too, giving me that which I’d imagined for so long.

When he broke away from me again, I whined, and he smiled knowingly.

“Not for long,” he promised, unfastening his shorts and shucking them off, pants and all, in one quick motion.

“Oh…” I sighed, my hands halting on my own shorts. I raked my eyes over his naked body, his strong, supple thighs, the nest of dark curls surrounding the base of his hard cock, the tip weeping and red. I didn’t think I’d ever seen anything more arresting. My mind sifted through every image I’d ever cherished, every work of art and obscenity, every person I’d met or obsessed about from afar, and all of it paled in comparison to finally having him here with me, exposed and unspeakably alluring.

He was broader than me in every way, even his cock, dangling heavily between his legs, was thicker than mine. I wanted it to fill me in every way, wanted to run my tongue along every vein and ridge, nose along the length, inhaling his musk and feeling his cock throb against me. And yet I was afraid. I felt sure I would falter and disappoint.

“Are you okay, Draco? If you don’t — ”

“Stop asking me that,” I said, a bit too snappishly.

“I’m fine,” I tried, milder this time. “I just… you’re…”

I didn’t know what to say. Everything I was thinking was too intense, too ridiculous to allow it to be spoken.

“I’m nothing compared to you,” he said with a look that let me know he meant it, however absurd it seemed to me. His fingers rested on top of the zipper of my shorts, and he looked to me for permission. I nodded emphatically, lying on my back so he could pull them off, my hips lifting off the mattress.

He made a noise in the back of his throat, something primal and urgent, as his eyes swept over me, his hands running up and down my thighs. His mouth descended upon me, peppering the tender skin of my inner thighs with kisses, licking a long stripe up the crease where my thigh met my groin. I couldn’t help but tighten my hands around his shoulders, scrambling for purchase and trying not to writhe on the bed.

“Merlin, Draco, I — ”

It made me smile. I’d so rarely heard anyone say Merlin. My parents let it slip every so often when they were tired or too disgruntled to care, but mostly they said Muggle curses, our lives so thoroughly defined by that world. 

“I want my mouth on every damn part of you,” he murmured into the soft skin of my lower belly. He was only a whisper away from my cock, the aching anticipation too much to bear. I angled my hips upward without even meaning to, the head meeting the edge of his jaw, and I gasped.

“Shhh, I’m getting to it,” he quietly assured me, stroking along my sides, easing my hips back down. He dipped lower, his tongue washing over my balls with care, rolling each one slowly in his mouth, suckling gently. I didn’t realize I’d been holding my breath until the air came out in a stuttering, labored gust. I watched the contraction of my stomach, jutting in and out as I tried to compose myself. He smiled, the shadows of the night making the expression almost sinister, and left a series of kisses along my cock, ending in a wet, open-mouthed touch of his lips to the head. I let out a strangled noise, the likes of which I’d never heard from my mouth before, a high, desperate keening that made me hide my face underneath my hands.

“No one can hear you. It’s just me,” he whispered as he pried my hands away, pressing the length of his body against mine. It was a powerful feeling, his weight above me, pinning me to the sheets. I felt safe, protected in his warmth, covered so completely.

_But it’s_ you _I don’t want to hear me. Don’t you understand?_

He kissed my neck and began to rut against me. I felt the rising tide driving through my blood, edging me into delirium, and suddenly I couldn’t suppress my mortifying moans.

“Yes yes, that’s it. Let go. Do you know how gorgeous you are?” He reached down and took my erection in hand, still biting and kissing my neck, his voice hot and insistent in my ear. “You feel so perfect in my hand.”

“B-better than…?” I trailed off, my words sounding muffled and strained. I felt like I was leaving my body as he stroked up and down my shaft, the pleasure like an uncharted beast I had no hope of taming, this small, helpless body of mine unable to contain so much at once.

“Better than everyone, Draco. You know that, don’t you?” he purred, his mouth covering mine, swallowing my ecstatic moans.

How did he know? How did he always know?

I was so close already, the surge traveling up my cock, my balls drawing up tight, but his hand stilled.

“H-Harry, _please_. Don’t stop. I-I — ”

_I can’t live without this anymore._

“So eager, aren’t you? I’m going to take care of you, Draco. Always.” And with one last kiss, he stood up. “Sit on the edge of the bed.”

I frowned but obeyed.

“Spread your legs.” His fingers grazed my knee, and I blushed deeply at the lurid command. As soon as I obeyed, he sank to his knees, and my mouth opened in a wanton groan of understanding. “Put your hands in my hair.”

I nodded dazedly, slipping my fingers into those silky black curls. He wrapped a hand around my length, pumping up and down slowly as he leaned in, licking across the head. He sucked on it, moaning like he loved the feel of my cock in his mouth. When he slid down, enveloping half of my shaft within that seal of moist heat, my fingers tightened in his hair. Harry bobbed up and down, my slickened erection slipping in and out of his mouth, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him.

“I — Harry — I’m — ” It was too late, my incoherent warning couldn’t stop the pulses of come filling Harry’s mouth, my orgasm taking hold of me before I could even process what was happening.

“I’msorryI’msorryI’msorry,” I panted. I wasn’t sure if I was apologizing for coming inside him or for the unforgiving clutch of my fingers in his hair, but he looked up at me, desire still written in his smoldering eyes, and I relaxed.

“What are you apologizing for?” He chuckled as he got up from the floor, straddling my lap and pushing me backward with a hand on the center of my chest.

“You don’t mind that I…” I couldn’t say it. I’d never spoken about anything like this in front of anyone. There had been ungainly, clinical sex talks with my parents, but those had no place in this moment nor did they resemble it in any way. This private sharing of desire, our bodies and hearts mingling, was entirely new and sanctified. I was afraid every word would burst some unspoken bubble.

“That you came in my mouth? Not at all.” He shook his head with a smile and kissed me, bucking his hips, a reminder of his hardness thrusting against my stomach.

I sighed, thankful for his body pressing me into the mattress again. I wanted to live like this, with Harry as my human blanket, for all time. All my worries felt miles away when he was on top of me.

“I didn’t know… It just sort of…”

“I know. You get better at anticipating it, but it still comes over you like a bludger to the head sometimes. Trust me, I liked it,” he whispered, brushing my hair back from my forehead.

“Do you… want me to touch you?” I trailed my fingers down his stomach, mapping the contours of muscle.

“Only if you want to.”

“I do, but I’ve never done it to anyone.”

He smiled and traced my jawline. Kissed the bridge of my nose. I made a tut of annoyance.

“You knew that already, didn’t you?”

“Not with 100% certainty, but yes… I thought so.”

I turned my cheek into the sheets and closed my eyes, but he clasped my chin and brought me back to eye level.

“Hey… I want you. Just as you are. Okay?” His words were deliberate. Resolute. I nodded. When he rose onto his knees, the drag of his cock warm and gentle across my belly, my fingers traveled further down. I stopped at the patch of hair surrounding his cock, carding curious fingers through it, cupping his balls and rolling them in my hand, watching his face to see what he felt, if he felt anything at all.

His eyes drooped to half mast, and he rolled off me, maneuvering me onto my side until we were face to face. He guided my hand to his cock, carefully wrapping my fingers around it, and began to move my hand, his fingers encasing mine, our fists moving together.

“Mmm,” he sighed, biting his bottom lip, and I surged forward, capturing his lip between my teeth. His breath sped up, and his hand began to pull away, but I grabbed it and placed it over mine, back where it belonged.

“I like this,” I confessed with a whine. I wanted our bodies to move together, to move because of each other, _for_ each other. I wanted him to anticipate my every motion, our limbs in perfect harmony. Two inseparable halves of one whole.

“I like your hands on me,” he answered, kissing me again. He couldn’t seem to stop kissing me, and I drank from his mouth with gratitude. My hand sped up and he matched my rhythm, never taking his fingers away, covering my hand completely. It was overwhelming: the heat of his hand on mine, the heat of my hand on his cock, his hot tongue tracing every corner of my mouth. When he came, he said my name, a reverent sigh that tore a moan from my lips as his release splashed between us, his come painting my stomach with warm streaks of white.

I looked down at the mess and wanted to run my fingers through it, yet I wasn’t sure if I wanted him to see just how deviant I could be, how consumed with him I truly was.

“Let’s get you cleaned up.” He started to rise from the bed, but I caught his wrist without ever making the decision to do so. He looked back at me, a confused tilt of his head.

“Can you leave it for a little bit? I… I like your come on me,” I whispered, closing my eyes so I didn’t have to see his reaction.

“Draco… Merlin, you are so… do you even know?”

“What?” I cautiously opened my eyes, surprised to see him smiling reverently. “Disgusting? Pathetic?”

“I wish everyone were as disgusting as you. The world would be a better place,” he laughed.

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re completely barmy?”

“Oh yes, quite a few. Lie on your back.”

I did so immediately, my body was responding to his voice before my brain could catch up. I was learning that I loved doing what he told me to, liked leaving the decisions in his hands. I wanted him to use my body however he pleased, wanted to make him feel so good he wouldn’t be able to think of anyone but me. He swiped a finger through the pool on my stomach, and held himself above me, his free hand flat on the mattress, his face hovering above mine, his knees nudging my hips.

“Open your mouth.” His pupils were blown wide, and he was breathless as he watched my mouth fall open. He pushed his finger inside, the tip resting on my tongue. “Suck.”

I did, and we both moaned from the sensation. It was bitter and thick, and yet it made me hard again, swallowing this part of him, doing it because he told me to, watching his mouth grow slack as he watched me eagerly sucking, taking everything he gave me as though it were the most precious gift imaginable.

“You’re being so good for me, Draco. Look at you… fuck, I want — ”

His praise was exhilarating, and I thought I’d do just about anything to hear it again. I let his finger fall out of my mouth, saliva dripping down my chin.

“You make such a beautiful mess. So perfect like this.” His voice was breaking, and it stirred things inside me that I didn’t know I possessed.

“What do you want? I want… I _need_ to give it to you. Just tell me. Please?” I held his face in my hands, no longer embarrassed by what I needed, too wrapped up in this insatiable feeling that I couldn’t help but chase.

“Can I finger you?”

My cheeks pinked, but it was something I’d thought about many times before, his fingers probing me, his cock thrusting inside me. I’d lie down on my bed, stomach quivering as I raised my arse and reached behind me, touching myself and imagining how he might do it, how he would open me up and murmur encouragements into my neck, telling me how much he liked it, how much he wanted me.

I nodded jerkily, and when his mouth still quirked in skepticism, I ran my hands down his back until I met the curve of his lovely arse, squeezing it and bucking up to bring our hips flush.

“I want your fingers inside me.” I tried to say it with conviction, forcing the breathy murmur out of my voice.

“Okay.”

He grabbed his wand from the nightstand, pointed it at the palm of his hand, and uttered a word I’d never heard.

“What are you doing?”

He started to laugh like he thought I was putting him on, but then his features schooled into something more flabbergasted.

“I guess I take this sort of thing for granted. You go to a wizarding boarding school, you end up trading wanking tips.”

I shrugged and shook my head.

“It’s lube. I take it you don’t know how to conjure it? I always forget you went to regular schools. Not to make you feel like a science project, but that fascinates me.”

“How do you even _know_ that? I never told you that,” I asked with a touch of suspicion. Was he as obsessed with me as I was with him? Did he root around my room looking for clues in the same way I had?

“Your father talks about you a lot. He’s proud of you.”

“Oh.” If he registered my strange disappointment, he didn’t mention it.

“Here. I’ll vanish this and show you. It’s a useful spell to know.”

“Why? Unless I find myself entering the tawdry world of sex work, I can’t see why I shouldn’t just buy lube like a Muggle.”

“Well well, look who found his sass reserves yet again.” He smirked, and I rolled my eyes.

“My reserves are nearly always overflowing. They just need replenishing from time to time. Get on with it.”

“Okay, it’s just _Lubrico_. The result is slightly different from person to person. Depends on what your perception of lube is, what you’re picturing when you conjure it. Here, give it a try.” He handed me his wand, and I bristled a bit. While I might not have spent my formative years surrounded by wizardkind, I still knew that lending someone your wand was a significant gesture, particularly if you didn’t know the person all that well. “Go on, it’s not going to bite. I think it should work for you. Not as well as your own, of course, but well enough.”

I took it and rubbed my thumb along the wood. It was a bit longer than my own wand, sanded smooth in every part except the base, where it gave way to a rougher surface that more closely resembled the bark of a tree. I felt the magic pulsing within, felt the wand yield to me the way a young child might to an aunt or an uncle. Loving, accepting, but still preferring its parent, the person who had raised and nurtured it. I aimed the tip at my palm and pictured the viscous liquid from the tube I kept hidden in the very back of the bottom drawer of the wardrobe, strategically placed underneath a pile of socks and spelled with a disillusionment charm. Overzealous, perhaps, but I couldn’t bear the thought of Mafalda, or worse, my mother finding it and immediately knowing what I’d been up to. 

After a couple seconds, a small puddle of cool liquid dripped from the wand and into my hand. I handed the wand back and dipped a tentative finger in the substance. It was pretty much the same consistency as the lube stashed in my wardrobe. My amazement must have shown because he grinned at me.

“Want to tell me again how this isn’t very useful?”

“Fine,” I conceded with a groan. “It’s… pretty great.”

“Still want me to put it to good use?” He left a line of kisses on my shoulder blade and continued down my back, gently pushing me forward when he reached my tailbone. I gasped as I felt him lick at the top of my cleft, my fingers closing on a fist to keep the lube from escaping.

“Y-yes. _God_ yes.”

Harry positioned himself behind me, pulling me closer until my back met his chest, and opened my fist, scooping the lube from my palm.

“Can you get on your stomach for me, love?” He kissed my ear and rubbed my belly. I melted from the power of that one word, proof of him thinking of me as a lover.

I lay down and hummed contentedly when he eased me onto my knees, guiding my legs apart. God, I loved the way he moved my body like it belonged to him. Images flashed across my mind of him washing me. I wanted to tilt my head back as he massaged my scalp, rubbing shampoo into my hair, lift my leg at his command so he could run a soapy washcloth down it. Was it like this for everyone?

“Tell me if it hurts, okay?”

He kissed both of my arse cheeks, and the intimacy of it was somehow harder to take than the fact that his fingers would be inside of me soon. I flinched a little as the cold lube met my skin. He rubbed circles on the rim, and the anticipation made me clench.

“Relax, Draco. Take a couple deep breaths.”

I nodded and did as he told me, releasing a long, measured exhalation.

“So good for me, love.”

I felt a deep well of calm spreading from my stomach outward, and then his finger began to push in. It felt good, the nerves around the rim ignited from his tender care, his finger only slipping in further when he could sense I was ready, my impatience evident in the way I began to squirm and moan. He rocked in and out, and it was impossible not to think about what it would be like if he replaced his finger with his cock, fucking me into the mattress until he filled me, his face buried in the back of my neck as he called my name. He started to stroke me from the inside, striking a match across that bundle of nerves deep within me, and I fisted the sheets, my moans growing louder. My cock began to fill out, the drag of my erection across the sheets a teasing friction that provided no relief; it only stretched my yearning until it was a rubber band on the verge of snapping.

Suddenly, I felt the heat of Harry’s chest on top of me, his weight pushing my cock into the mattress. I began to thrust against the bed, knowing I was being completely shameless, but unable to care. I wanted to come with his fingers inside me. I wanted things I didn’t think I’d have the courage to ask for.

“You like it so much, don’t you?” He licked at the shell of my ear, and I arched back into him, my hand reaching back to clumsily grab at his neck, his hair.

“It feels so good, but I want — I need — ”

“What do you need, love? Tell me.”

“More. I just want — _more_ — ” I hoped he knew what I meant. I couldn’t seem to make the words come out.

He withdrew, the absence of his body unexpectedly bleak, my whole world dimmer in the time it took him to slick his fingers. When he entered me again, two fingers this time, the stretch was more difficult, a dull ache fraying the pleasure. I thought of my mother tending to my wounds when I was small, the chemical burn of alcohol on my raw, blood-mottled skin before the soothing impact of ointment and a bandage. I chuckled at the absurdity of this image entering my mind right now, and he mouthed at my neck.

“What are you laughing about, you beautiful boy?”

“Nothing. I — _oh_.” His fingers slid in deeper, and when he hit that spot again, I felt it in my fingertips and my toes, as though he’d flipped a switch inside me. It never felt like that when I touched myself. “Harry, do you — if you want — I — ”

I stuttered as his fingers began to pump in and out faster, my words dissipating like charred paper into ash under the crush of a thumb.

“Do you want me to fuck you? Is that what you’re begging for?” Harry was breathing hard against my neck now, his cock rubbing against my arse cheek as he moved in time with the thrusts of his fingers.

“Yes _yes_. _Please_. I want your cock,” I gasped, my neck rapidly flushing at the admission. I was stunned at my sudden courage. I wondered if this was how it happened, the wire of fear clipped free in the face of the all-consuming aura of pleasure, a biological button that lurks in all of us, waiting to be pushed at the right moment, allowing us to transcend that whisper of reluctance and dive deep into the sea.

“Are you sure, baby?” he whispered, his voice thick and sweet as syrup.

“Yes — god — I’m sure. I’msureI’msure, _please_.”

“Okay — okay,” he agreed, the words jagged dashes that made my cock ache even more. He wanted me, and I couldn’t believe my good fortune. “Get on your back? I want to see you.”

He withdrew, and I turned around, dizzy with need, watching him intently as he impatiently searched for a condom in the nightstand.

“There’s a wizarding way, but I can’t — I don’t want to wait.” He looked up as he finished rolling the condom on, and he shook his head slowly, his eyes traveling up and down my body. “I don’t ever want to forget what you look like right now. No matter what happens, I — ”

I frowned but didn’t ask what he’d meant to say. I spread my legs and pulled them back the way he told me to, lifting my hips as he nestled a pillow underneath him. He slicked his cock, and then there was nothing left to do, nothing to delay this moment I’d been waiting for all my life. As he entered me, I hissed, the burn inescapable no matter how much I wanted it. He met my eyes and smiled, stroking my sides, my legs, my chest, waiting for me to adjust.

“Take a breath and imagine everything loosening in here, every muscle uncoiling. Think about letting your hips fall to the ground on their own. Not pressing, not forcing anything, just letting your body release.” He placed a warm palm low on my stomach, and my chest constricted, my heart welling at the thorough care he was giving me. I breathed in and out a few times, closing my eyes and visualizing my limbs fluid and supple, like slowly dripping honey. I felt the vise grip of my walls ease up, and I opened my eyes, nodding for him to continue. He pushed in slowly, back and forth a small bit at a time, and suddenly he was fully sheathed. I gazed in wonderment at the sight, his hips meeting my arse, and a possessive ripple made its way through me, an odd growl perched at the base of my throat. Despite him being the one to fuck me, I felt that this somehow passed ownership to me, my body absorbing him, drawing him in and squeezing tightly, refusing to let him go.

He leaned forward, scooping me in his arms and holding me close, our lips a mere inch apart.

“You feel like heaven, Draco. I knew you would.” As he began to move, slow, long thrusts that chased away the burn little by little, replacing it with pure fire, his lips met mine over and over again, sweet kisses that grew hungrier each time. When he kissed my neck, I rested my chin on his shoulder, gazing down his back at the join of our bodies.

I watched the fluid undulation of his hips, his flesh like ripples in the ocean, each muscle working to make the movement happen, his arse squeezing, his thighs contracting. It looked so good. It looked like something I would watch happening to someone else, titillated and mortified for it, jerking off to men’s bodies crashing into one another, watching the way they pumped in and out, joined like one long promise.

But it wasn’t happening to someone else. It was happening to me, and it felt like a fever dream from which I hoped to never wake. As the drive of his hips whipped into a frenzy, my moans became more erratic and alien to me, vulnerable, needy sounds that he seemed to thrive on, his murmurs of _yes love that’s it that’s it I want to hear you_ like a heady drug I needed above all else.

“Tell me when you’re close,” he spoke into my ear, his lips and tongue brushing against it. I was nearing my peak already, and I hated it, torn between wanting that flood of relief and wanting to be suspended in this state forever, hovering just underneath the pinnacle, my body belonging to him in every way.

“N-now — I’m — fuck, make me come, Harry.”

His hand found its way to my cock, kissing me breathless as his fist worked my erection, a relentless pace that had me spurting over his hand all too quickly. I practically screamed as my orgasm shook me, my nails digging into his back, my arse clenching around his cock.

“ _Oh_ Draco — Merlin, that’s — listen to you.”

He fucked into me even harder, and I relished the way it rendered me boneless, my body an over-stimulated strip that crackled and hissed as he took his pleasure from me, spilling inside me a few moments later. I scraped my teeth along his neck and shoulder, kissed his face from top to bottom, none of it enough somehow. I whined when he pulled out, wishing he would let his cock soften inside me and just rest within, that intimate place making space for him as long as he’d let me.

He got rid of the condom in the wastebasket. I tried not worry about it, but I couldn’t help picturing Mafalda or my parents finding the evidence of what we’d just done. He cast a cleaning charm on me before I could protest, flicking the wand toward his own body afterward. I mourned the loss of his sweat and come cooling on my skin. I wanted it to linger just a moment longer, wanted to look down and know I hadn’t imagined everything.

As we settled together in bed, our legs entwining, my hand resting on his hip, all of my fear came rushing back. The hush of the room seemed so oppressive now, every beat of silence filled with dread. Did he want me to leave?

“You get a tiny little wrinkle right here,” he placed the tip of his forefinger in the space between my eyebrows, “when you’re lost in thought.”

“Mmm,” I replied faintly, my fingers flexing around him.

“Still won’t tell me, huh? Not even after this?” He smiled, but there was a hint of sadness in it.

“I’m sorry… I just… Do you want me to leave?” I stared at the space where his locket would normally lay against his tanned skin. I wondered where it was, why he hadn’t been wearing it tonight.

“Why — no, no, I don’t. Do _you_ want to leave?”

I shook my head and met his eyes.

“Do you know how happy I am that we slept together?”

Another shake of my head.

“Of course you don’t,” he laughed. “Oh, Draco… you’re quite the puzzle sometimes. You’re my favorite thing in this entire beautiful country, okay?”

“Stop,” I bashfully said, burying my face in the pillow.

“Come here.” He turned my face back toward him, kissing the spot where his finger had just been, down my nose and across my cheek. “Can I ask you something?”

I nodded.

“How did you… how much magic do you know if you didn’t go to a wizarding school?”

“Plenty. My father’s quite capable. He teaches for a living, after all, and he’s well sought after.” I felt the wrinkle he’d told me about forming on my face again, my hackles raising just a bit at the possibility of someone not believing in my father’s skills. “He taught me everything he knows. He just… it’s complicated with us. Our history with magic, it’s… complicated.”

“I know. So is mine.” He ran his hand up and down my arm, his eyes downcast. This close, I could see how long and dark his lashes were.

“Did you like it? Going to Hogwarts?”

“My Hogwarts memories are some of the happiest of my life. It’s… comforting being around that many wizards at that age. You’re all bumbling through both magical puberty and actual puberty at the same time, failing and succeeding together. I can’t imagine going through it without that. It seems like it would be… hard.”

I didn’t say anything, but he was right. I never wanted to tell Father that. Above all else, he feared failing me, and I never wanted to give him cause to believe that was true.

“There’s something to be said for same sex dorm rooms too. Helps you figure things out faster, even if that’s for the worse sometimes.” He smiled and petted my hair, smoothing it back like he was stroking a contented cat.

“Are you… I guess you’re bisexual? You kissed Chiara…” I could hear the jealous tint to my voice, and his hand stopped moving.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t… You’re not the easiest person to read. When I touched you that first time, rubbing your shoulder, you were so upset. And I dunno… the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like it wasn’t the best idea, so I kept my distance. I have this habit of — ” He sighed deeply and pulled me closer, his hand firm and warm in the middle of my back. “ — rushing in without thinking. I didn’t want to do that with you.”

“I’m not the best at…” _Being kind. Letting the shield down. Being a fucking person._ “All of this.”

“You’re just a bit rough around the edges, but as it’s already been established, I’m pretty fond of that.”

I smiled, and he cupped my cheek in one hand.

“Call me by your name, and I’ll call you by mine,” he crooned, and I canted my head, my eyes widening as I parsed his meaning.

“Draco?” I hesitantly asked, my index finger tapping his shoulder.

“Harry,” he sighed longingly, kissing me slow and deep.

“Draco,” I breathed into his mouth, enraptured that he wanted to erase the line of separation as much as I did, our names nothing but interchangeable titles, two words that became one. _Dracoharrydracoharry._

“Harry,” he called back, still kissing me with fervor, rolling on top of me, tucking me underneath him once again. I grimaced as we shifted, the pressure on my bladder growing as his torso met mine.

“Sorry… I have to pee… I don’t want to get up.” It sounded childish as soon as it left my mouth. I wanted to take it back, to clarify that I meant I never wanted to leave this bed and face the rest of the world, wanted to eradicate all paltry necessities until we only needed _this_ to sustain ourselves, but he laughed, that always reassuring crinkle around his beautiful eyes.

“Me too.”

“Go together?”

He nodded and slid off the bed, padding towards the bathroom. I took every opportunity to watch him, the sureness of his gait, the bounce of his arse, as I followed. He waved to the toilet and leaned against the sink, as if to say _you first_. My cheeks grew florid at the thought of sharing this mundanity with him.

I walked over, and as I began to piss, he came up behind me, rubbing my stomach and kissing my shoulder. I looked to my left, admiring our reflection in the mirror, his body molded to mine like we were long time lovers who did this everyday, sharing a bathroom and brushing our teeth side by side every night. I didn’t know the depth of intimacy then. It’s so hard to picture it in the abstract, isn’t it? The way our lives become inextricably connected after years of companionship is such a mysterious union that can’t be articulated. It has to be experienced. Somehow, that moment in the bathroom, the splash of urine in the basin, his hand on my stomach, was my first glimpse into what that could mean. Small but vital.

When we traded places, I mimicked his stance, our reflection reversed in the glass. At my back, he had looked strong, taller and more imposing than me. At his back, I looked small and unassuming, the top of my head only reaching his shoulder. Still, I loved the way we looked together, our contrast and our sameness too, all of it there, all of it beautiful.

As we entered the bedroom, our glances became shy.

“I should probably go back to my room.” I halted my steps, knowing that although we might not want it to be true, it was.

He nodded with a rueful quirking of the left corner of his mouth. I turned to go, but he caught my wrist.

“What if you didn’t?” he whispered. “Do you really think… Do you think they care? Sometimes it seems like they already know. Your parents are… rather intimidatingly astute.”

I laughed, the abrupt sound startling me.

“That’s them, all right. But I… I honestly don’t know the answer.”

“Stay.” One soft word, a thumb against my pulse point, a tilt of his head, curls falling in his eyes, and I knew I would. At that moment, I couldn’t find it in me to care about being uncovered.

He lifted the sheet, and we slipped underneath, our bodies lacing together as though we already knew how well we fit. I fell asleep to the sound of his heartbeat, my ear pressed to his chest.


	6. Chapter 6

“Mmph,” I groaned and squinted as the light streamed in from the window. I felt for his wand on the nightstand, knocking things over in the process, and pointed it at the curtains, shutting the infernal sun out of the room. I leaned back with a sigh, glancing at the clock as I placed his wand back. “Fuck!”

I shot up in bed, startling a sleepy Harry who regarded me with bleary eyes.

“What’s got your pants in a twist?” he croaked, rubbing his eyes as he sat up.

“It’s afternoon! We — fuck, we’ve probably already been spotted. Mafalda makes the rounds in the morning.” My cavalier mood about being discovered had melted away overnight. At this rate, I was going to give myself emotional whiplash. I hoped he didn’t think my indecision had anything to do with him. He was the only thing about which I had no doubts, the sunny glow of last night, the reverberating echoes of what we’d done in this room like magic vibrating around us. I wanted it. I wanted it always, but I didn’t know if I was ready to share it with the world.

“Hey, it’s gonna be fine. Let’s go downstairs. See if everyone’s at lunch.” He massaged my shoulder, his thumb digging into the muscle like it had in that pivotal moment, the one I’d somehow gracelessly dismissed. How could I have wasted that chance? I nodded, nerves still skittering about my stomach like Billywigs in flight, and went to my room to get dressed.

 

***

 

“Professor, I got your note. Is this afternoon all right for going over my pages?”

“Of course! We definitely need to get all that sorted before you leave. I don’t want Bernstein calling me up to tell me what a terrible waste I’ve made of his candidate’s time,” my father replied with a grin, folding his paper in half.

“He knows me. If any time is wasted, he’ll know I’m the one to blame, not you,” Harry said with a smile, sipping his apricot juice and shooting me a thoughtful glance.

No one had raised an eyebrow or narrowed a skeptical eye when we came to join them for lunch. The hunch of my shoulders had abated a bit, but they rose in a defensive arch at the mention of his departure. He only had a couple of weeks left. The lazy pace of summer was speeding toward the frenzy of fall, and I couldn’t stand the thought that he’d be gone soon.

“Still, don’t feel that you have to rush to do it all today. After all, it _is_ your birthday. It can wait until tomorrow.”

“It’s your birthday?”

My father’s head swiveled in my direction, and I wondered if my tone had revealed anything beyond simple curiosity.

“It is.” Harry smiled at me, a bit of mischief in it, and I resisted the urge to glare at him. “Actually, I was hoping you might keep me company tonight, Draco? If that’s all right with your father and Narcissa, of course. 

“Of course. The old people will stay at home. Go celebrate. Be young. We won’t wait up,” my mother answered with a wide grin that I tried not to dissect.

 

***

 

Crema had never felt as lively as it did that night, the thrum of beginnings and endings wafting by on the evening breeze. Every couple on the streets seemed to be waist deep in the same limbo as us, squeezing every last drop of time together, packing the hours to the brim as though their fullness could chase away the inevitable. They kissed and linked arms, their affection brazen and unmitigated. At first, I was wary of seeking that validation from him, unsure if he’d shrink away if I tried to touch him in public. But after a dinner filled with wine and delicious food, stories of adolescent mishaps traded with laughter and tender glances, he made the decision for me, lacing our fingers together as we walked down the street. I couldn’t contain my smile, my cheeks pink and aching from the stretch of happiness.

We swam in the river, his hand meeting my cock under the water, his tongue licking the moisture from my neck. I shuddered against him as I came, my hands on his arse and his name on my lips.

The walk back home felt like a march to some shadowy fate. I was struck by the memory of trudging back to the house in England after I’d broken that vase Mother treasured, the one she’d gotten on holiday in Florence, bought in a street market but precious because of the memories it evoked. The sky blue and jade swirls of color, the dainty design of small white flowers snaking around neck of the vase, crashed to the floor in a sea of powder and shattered porcelain. Ten years old, I’d fled the house and hidden in the gardens, my knees streaked with dirt as I kneeled beneath the black alder tree. I didn’t gain the courage to come out again until nightfall, the rustic marigold of the sunset filtering over the sky like god was pulling a vast curtain across it. As I walked back, it felt like my legs were wading in molasses, a tensile force pushing invisible hands against my stubby little calves.

When we returned, my parents were in Father’s study. We heard their laughter trailing down the hall as we walked through the entryway. Harry put his hands in his pockets and jerked his head toward the stairs with a questioning raise of his eyebrows. I nodded and started up them, Harry following close behind.

When we reached his room, he shut the door behind us, spinning me around and pinning me against it, nibbling on my bottom lip, his tongue dancing across my own. Despite how the night had gone, the surprise of his body on mine still made me gasp. I wanted to touch him constantly, wished to lock us in that room for the remainder of his stay. I didn’t dare to assume he was that immersed in me too, but his hands clawed my chest like he wanted to find out what was underneath.

We shed our clothes, and Harry spelled us into locked silence. I winced as I sat on the bed too heavily, and he noticed immediately.

“Sore today?”

I shrugged petulantly.

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t need you checking up on me.”

“Ah, there’s the feisty Draco we all know and love.” He laughed as he kissed me, and although I knew he wasn’t wielding the word in _that_ way, I couldn’t help the thrill I felt at the sound of it on his tongue, the heft of the soft rolling “l” and the muted “o” like a spark of _Amortentia_ through me. “I’m sure you know there are spells to help. I could numb it if — ”

“No. I don’t want that.” I liked the reminder. I wouldn’t have dreamed of chasing it away. It was something precious, something to be cherished. I wanted the sting of what we’d done to scream across the inside of me like a song, a melody of Harry and Draco.

“Well… I can think of a much more enjoyable way to help. Take off your clothes and get on your stomach.”

I eagerly did so, sighing in anticipation as he arranged me on my knees, spreading my legs wide. When I felt a wet warmth sliding across my entrance, I gasped in equal parts shock and lewd satisfaction. Surely he hadn’t meant to do that? Why would he put his mouth there with no hesitation? I — _oh._

My upper half slipped forward on the sheets, my hands clutching the pillow, burying my face in an effort to hide both my shame and my excitement. His tongue was working with undeniable enthusiasm now, laving over the skin again and again, little groans escaping his mouth as he licked, healing the puffy skin with the heat of his careful tongue. It was such a gentle, thorough caress, and I felt the tight muscle relaxing under his care, opening up to him as I moaned and squirmed on the bed, unable to stop myself from thrusting toward his mouth, a silent entreaty for more. When I felt his tongue slip inside me, the high-pitched noise I let out made him laugh, a throaty rumble I felt inside my body, reverberating through my skin as his mouth sealed around my rim, sucking and driving me to sobs.

It was only when he stopped that I realized my sobs were no longer pleas of lustful desperation. Somewhere along the way, they’d turned into fat tears, the ephemeral reality of him a truth I couldn’t push away any longer.

“What’s wrong, love? Did I hurt you?” He came to lay beside me, stroking my hair, a note of frantic concern in his voice.

“We wasted so much time,” I choked out. “I-I don’t want you to leave.”

The harder I tried to suppress my tears, the more they seemed to spring forth, a waterfall of angst that I wanted to tamp down, securing it with a lid of iron strength so that I might preserve these final moments between us, leaving them untainted by my hysterical emotions. I would have plenty of time to breakdown when he left. I didn’t want to squander the rest of his stay.

“Will you fuck me again?” I asked through my tears, and he responded with a pitiable smile that made me want to yell at him.

“Draco… come here.” He tried to envelop me in his arms, to cuddle me close and dry my tears, but I didn’t want it.

“No! We don’t — you’re going to be gone in less than two weeks! I just… I _need_ you to…” I trailed off defeatedly, burrowing into his chest without intending to. I was furious with him for calling me on my bluff, intuitively knowing this was what I needed from him right now.

“Sweet boy,” he murmured into my neck as he pulled me against him, and though I wanted to be annoyed, I couldn’t help but melt into it. “Do you know how happy I am that I met you?”

I shook my head, and he chuckled quietly.

“I am. So very, very unthinkably happy. Promise you won’t forget about me when you go off to school and meet hundreds of more interesting people?”

I pulled back to frown at him, not able to spare a thought for what a mess I surely looked, my eyes red-rimmed, my cheeks streaked with tears.

“How can you say that?”

He swallowed, and my eyes followed the movement of his throat, the way his chiseled jawline tightened. He didn’t say anything; he just kissed me until my tears dried, and I fell asleep in his arms.

 

***

 

“Draco!”

I sharply turned my head, surprised to hear Pansy’s voice. Although it had only been a couple of weeks since we last spoke, it felt like a distant memory of someone else’s life.

“You disappeared,” she said, dismounting her bike and walking it up to me. I was heading off to meet Harry for a swim, towel over my shoulder as I trotted toward the river. I stopped, not knowing what to say.

“I’ve just been… busy. Harry’s leaving soon.”

“I was right, wasn’t I?” Her eyes turned flinty, but there was a warble in her voice that reminded me of that night by the river, the way she’d looked straight into the depth of my lies.

“Pansy, I…”

“Why didn’t you tell me?! Forget that I was crazy about you. I can handle that. I knew you didn’t feel the same way. But this?! We’re _friends_. Why wouldn’t you tell me you were… gay or whatever you are. _What_ are you?!” she demanded, tears pricking at the edges of her eyelids.

“I don’t know… I… if I could barely tell myself, how could I tell you?” I whispered, my eyes fixing to the grass under my bare feet. 

“I thought you trusted me.”

“It’s not about that…” I struggled to explain myself.

Given the chance, would I do any better now? It’s so very hard to articulate to someone these roadblocks our minds put up to accepting ourselves, the mental obstacle courses we must chart to arrive at a place where it feels comfortable to give a name to what we know is in our hearts. It’s not something that can be forced. Much like all the best and worst things in life, the only way is through.

“This is probably our last summer together, and it’s like you don’t even care.” I lifted my eyes and saw Pansy wiping away her tears. I felt unspeakably guilty, but I still didn’t know how to unlock the distance I was putting between us.

“Pansy, I… I don’t know what to say.”

“Well… come find me when you’ve sorted that out,” she spat before speeding away on her bicycle.

 

***

 

Now entering the final days of his residency with us, Harry periodically had unavoidable work to do, either on his dissertation or continuing to help Father catalogue artefacts. We spent as much time together as we could, making love by the river, disillusionment charms wrapping us in a protective cocoon as he entered me, fucking me slow and hard, his hands pinning my wrists above my head, his eyes never leaving mine. We slept together every night, my pale legs slipping under the sheets of his bed after everyone else had gone to sleep, still unsure if anyone had noticed us in the light of morning, but not caring much for whether they did. The sands in the hour glass were trickling through faster with every passing minute, racing to the end of our time together. There wasn’t a moment to spare for second guessing. We didn’t speak of it, as though not giving the beast a name would somehow banish the reality of it.

I was in the attic, a secret cave I’d claimed for my own over the years, decorating it with all the banners of introversion: stacks of books, spare notebooks (What mysterious fission occurs in the life of a writer that gives birth to so many superfluous notebooks? Like rabbits, if not separated, they shall multiply.), a twin bed piled high with fluffy pillows and throw blankets that had aged out of their use in more prestigious parts of the house, all eventually coming to reside here, in the island of misfit bedding.

I couldn’t focus on my book, too anxious for Harry’s return. I checked the small windup clock I kept up there, not even knowing why I was doing it. He would be done when he was done, and it wasn’t as though I could barge into the study to declare, “Father, this is my last week with my lover. Might you spare him for the rest of the day?”

Chucking my book near the foot of the mattress, I reached onto the round table beside the bed and grabbed the peach I’d brought with me. I traced the sensual curve of it, feeling the delicate layer of fuzz beneath my fingertips. It reminded me of his body, the swell of his arse, the soft skin of the head of his cock, the fine hair at the nape of his neck. I dug my thumb into the depression at the top of the fruit, piercing the flesh until juice ran down my hand and I reached the pit. I tried to suppress a moan as I traced the soft, wet interior of the peach, unable to stop thinking about how he felt inside me and how I felt inside him.

The day before, he’d drizzled lube on my fingers and guided them to the furled skin below his bollocks, talking to me every step of the way, telling me exactly how to touch him, and I’d nearly died from the euphoria of feeling his walls clamp around me, his eyes rolling back in his head as I rubbed across his prostate. He groaned and shook with pleasure, and I hoped my mind would capture it all with eidetic accuracy, replaying it at will for years to come. I recalled his broken cries ( _I knew you’d know how to touch me. I knew you’d — can you feel it? How we’re the same? How I need you?),_ and although the stubborn self-effacing tendency of my youth remained, that dichotomy of brash, false confidence paired with intense insecurity that would never allow me to fully believe in his affection, the memory still drew an intense sound of desperation from my lips as I stroked the peach, plucking the pit free and tossing it to the ground.

I took off my shorts and was stricken by the need to look around the room, as though specters within the walls could witness the terrible shame of what I was about to do. I nearly cast a disillusionment charm, despite the fact that no one was there. As I lowered the peach, clamping the open fruit around the head of my hard cock, I felt certain there were invisible, disapproving eyes on me. Somehow that only spurred me on, making me wish for Harry to catch me in the middle of this.

I moaned as I moved the fruit up and down my cock, the embarrassment of the wet squelching sounds, this unspeakable perversion, leaving me so turned on that I knew I wouldn’t last long. I fucked the moist, sticky embrace of the peach and thought about fucking him, thought about how warm and inviting he’d felt around my fingers, wondered if I felt the same to him and —

“Fuck!” I shouted into the quiet room, the noise startling me almost as much as the sudden onset of my orgasm, my hand gripping the peach tightly to catch the evidence of what I’d done.

I panted, my breath erratic as the titillation subsided to leave behind only the humiliation of what had just happened. I grimaced at the evidence, unsure of what to do with it, but wanting it out of my sight immediately. I clumsily set it on the table, relieved to see that it was holding together despite its ruinous state, ragged flesh split in so many places from the way I’d treated it. I wondered if my come was what was holding the broken pieces together, and I shuddered at the evidence of my depravity, turning on my side on the mattress, facing away from the peach.

 

***

 

I didn’t know I’d dozed off until I felt a gentle nudge against my shoulder. I blinked lazily as I woke, smiling when I found Harry looking back at me.

“Hi,” I said sleepily.

“Hi there, love. I’ve been looking everywhere for you. You never told me about your secret palace,” he joked, eyes roving about the room.

“Well, it wouldn’t be a secret if I told you, now would it?” I pulled him in for a kiss, sighing into his mouth when his tongue met mine. He moved away all too soon. I whined, but he smirked as he removed the blanket I’d curled around my naked body and positioned himself between my legs. He kissed my thighs, nipping at the flesh in that perfect way he always did, the pleasure just on the right side of pain. He swallowed me down, my cock filling out as he licked and sucked, but he paused, a curious look on his face as my erection slipped out of his mouth. He licked his lips, his eyes narrowing in concentration, and then lapped along my length again. This time, the movement wasn’t for arousal’s sake. It was to chase the taste he’d detected, the one that deviated from the normal taste of me.

“What did you do?” he asked, his eyes sparkling with intrigue as he crawled up my body. I covered my eyes with my forearm, but he wrenched it away. “Tell me.”

“No. It’s… I’m disgusting.”

He frowned and stroked my hair reassuringly, but then his eyes migrated over to the table beside us, realization reaching the light of his eyes as he found the source of my afternoon’s enjoyment.

“Aaaahhh, I see.” He slid off me and grabbed the fruit from the table, cradling it in his palm.

“No! Don’t — it’s — please, just leave it alone,” I frantically pled, clutching at his arm.

“Stop. It’s okay. I’ve told you before, the world would be a better place if everyone were as disgusting as you.”

I reached for the fruit, and he caught my wrist in midair, his grip strong, his reflexes fast.

“Let go,” I growled.

“Will you stop trying to snatch this peach from me?” He chuckled, and my neck grew splotchy with a mixture of anger and mortification.

“Why are you doing this?!” I cried, the tremble of my voice making me sound much younger and more dramatic than I wanted.

His eyes softened, and he let go of my wrist, his free hand cupping my cheek.

“I’m doing this because I want you to _know_. Whatever happens… I want you to know, Draco. Don’t say I never told you,” he whispered. He kissed me as my forehead wrinkled in confusion, and when he pulled away, he bit into the soiled flesh of the fruit. I gasped, my hand covering my mouth, and at that moment, I knew what he meant. _When I leave here, I want you to know what this was for me. I want you to know that I wanted to devour you every bit as much as you wanted to consume me._

I expected him to wince, to spit it out with a vigorous shake of his head, and I almost released a litany of such protestations. They were poised on the tip of my tongue — _Don’t. I know. I KNOW. You don’t have to prove it. Of COURSE I know. How could I not? —_ but I said nothing, stunned into silence as I watched him. He chewed the hearty bite he’d taken, swallowing it with closed eyes and an expression of pure deference, his hand curling on his stomach as though feeling for the spot in which it would descend, the place inside him where part of me would become part of him, another devotion to add to the list of things we’d already gifted one another.

“Do you understand?” he said as he opened his eyes, placing what was left of the peach back on the table. His hands found their way into my hair, tugging on the root, holding me in place, his gaze level with mine. It was like looking into the heart of the sun, something so magnificent yet so powerful it seemed like it might burn the sight from my eyes. He wanted to make sure he was the last image I’d ever see, and I accepted that fate like the gift it was.

“Kiss me,” I breathlessly begged. “Kiss me before it’s gone.”

He nodded vehemently, locking our lips in a passionate kiss, remnants of myself, of the sweetness of peach juice, on his tongue as he licked into every corner of my mouth. 

 

***

 

“How would you like to go to Bergamo with Harry for his last few days? A trip for just the two of you.”

Father beamed at me, and I smiled back. I was too downtrodden about Harry’s departure to spend time wondering about the nature of his offer. I was simply happy to have the chance to be alone with Harry. I threw my arms around my father and hugged him tightly.

“I’d love that. Thank you.”

 

***

 

“You’re the loveliest student we’ve ever had, Harry.”

“I’m sure you say that to all of them,” Harry chuckled as he hugged my mother.

“Nonsense! You were a joy to have. Give your parents our regards. Tell them they’re welcome any time at all! I know it’s hard to tear them away from their work sometimes, but should they ever want a nice Italian holiday, send them our way.” My father gave Harry a firm hug, and we walked to the bus that would take us to Bergamo.

“I will absolutely insist they take you up on that!”

“Travel safe, darlings! See you in a few days, Draco.” My mother waved, and I felt her words in the pit of my stomach. I would be coming back, but Harry wouldn’t. Northern Italy would be sorely lacking without him.


	7. Chapter 7

We hiked into Bergamo, scaling the steep, verdant hill that led to the epic waterfall of Valbondione, laughing and shouting like children set free on the countryside, rapidly covering ground like it was the easiest thing in the world. If I had to say goodbye, I was at least glad I could do it here, the soothing thrum of the gushing waterfall around us, the fine mist on my cheeks, my skin flushed from the hike.

He kissed me in front of those wonders of nature, pulling me to him like a damsel in an old Hollywood movie, and it was impossible not to swoon just like those leading ladies would. I had no room to be resistant to the tides of emotion anymore. There was only time for him. Only time for this.

 

***

 

We stood on the balcony of our hotel room, the sun beginning to set over Bergamo, and I unabashedly curled into him, standing behind him with my arms around his waist, my chin on his shoulder. We were lovers on holiday, and I wanted everyone who might see us to know precisely what we were to each other.

Harry seemed happy to do the same, leaning back into my embrace, both of us reverently quiet as we watched the sun disappear for the night.

 

***

 

We didn’t leave the room that night, too enthralled with one another to bear parting for even a second, our hands and mouths driven by an unstoppable greed.

“Take your time,” he whispered as I grimaced slightly. He was lying on his back, and I was sinking down onto his cock, embarrassed by how long it was taking me, how unused to the stretch I still was, but he was patient and kind. “If it hurts too much, we — ”

“Have you not learned by now that I hate it when you do that?” I protested with a put upon sigh, and he laughed like he always did, my rancor nothing but irresistible charm to him. As my arse met his stomach, I gasped at the glorious fullness. I wasn’t sure I could move yet; the feeling was overwhelming enough already.

“Breathe.”

I nodded and did as he told me, stroking a hand down my stomach and pressing to see if I could trace the shape of him, could name the point where he began and I ended.

“It feels so… complete,” I said, thinking it a rather silly remark, an insufficient summation of this all-consuming charge running through me, but he smiled and nodded definitively: _I’m in this with you._

I rocked forward slowly, the press of him inside me straddling the line between pain and pleasure in a way that seemed to describe the entirety of him and what he was to me, always too much but never enough.

“Whatever feels best for you. Just do that, okay?” He stroked up and down my arms, my chest, my back, his hands drawing comforting circles across my skin.

I carefully began to move, experimenting with rising on my knees and back down again, grinding back and forth on his cock when that became too much. I tilted back as I rose up, and he hit that perfect spot inside me, every ache forgotten as that mass of nerves was set aflame.

“Right there?” he whispered as he gripped my hips and thrust up, rubbing across my prostate again.

“Y-yes, yes, that’s… _yes_ ,” I muttered helplessly, trying to match his rhythm now, pushing down as he drove back up. “I want — ”

My plea was lost in a chorus of shared moans, our bodies beginning to sync as we found a pace.

“Tell me,” he said, his voice husky and raw.

“I want you closer.” I clutched at his shoulders as if to pull him up, and, in one swift move, he drew me nearer, his arms winding around my shoulders as he maneuvered me into his lap. We were so close, I could feel his every exhale ghosting across my lips, his vivid green eyes boring into my own. I undulated my hips and groaned at the new angle, squeezing his waist between my knees.

“You’re so perfect like this. Riding me. Fucking yourself on my cock. How did you find me, love?” he asked as though I’d unearthed him in some uncharted corner of the world, given him shelter and a purpose when he was lost. I disagreed; it was clearly he who had found me, giving my restless soul a reason to stay still. He covered my face with kisses, the point of my chin, the corners of my eyelids, the tops of my cheeks. Each soft brush of his lips was so full of adoration, it made me want to weep.

He reached down and took my cock in hand. I was so painfully hard that I felt I might crumble underneath his palm, but he stroked me just the way I wanted to be stroked, his fingers always seeming to know just what I needed.

“Will you think about me? When I’m — ” he cried, anguish laced in his arousal.

“Harry — I — god, how could I ever stop?” I whined as he twisted his wrist, his thumb sliding through the mess gathered at the head of my cock.

“I don’t want to go either, Draco. I… I’m sorry.”

_Then don’t._

He buried his face in my neck, his teeth scraping the delicate skin, and I came so hard I saw stars, my hands bearing down on his shoulders to steady myself.

He gasped as I sped up, my hips working furiously to make him come, to give him everything I could before I wouldn’t be there to give anything anymore.

“Dracodracodraco,” he murmured my name, an insistent chant as he spilled inside me, our chests pressed together, our bodies tightly wound like spools of thread. I wished I could step outside of myself for just a moment, look upon us and see what a picture we made.

We stayed like that for a long time, sweat and come cooling on our skin, kissing lazily, our hands exploring each other without hurry. Eventually, he picked me up and lay me down on the bed.

He came to lay beside me, wrapping his arm around my waist, and I raised my knee as I felt a warm trickle between my legs. I reached down, and rubbed across my over-sensitive entrance, lifting my finger to look at the sticky come leaking out of me.

“I’m thoughtless. Sorry. Let me — ”

I reached out and grabbed his wrist.

“No, don’t.”

“You are a delightfully devious boy.”

“Yes, I’m sick. It’s been well-established, remember?” I grumbled, turning away from him to face our open balcony window.

“That’s not what I meant.” He fitted his body along the curves of mine, his thighs settling against the backs of my legs, his softening cock against my arse. “You _know_ I love that about you. There’s nothing wrong with you, Draco.”

“How can you be so sure? You barely know me.” It was cruel and untrue. His knowledge of me couldn’t be measured in the transitory length of his stay at our house. It was quantified in whispered secrets, in sweat-soaked limbs, in eyes communing across rooms. But I was angry with him for leaving, and I wanted to hurt him. It was pointless. I knew it wouldn’t make anything better, but I couldn’t halt my petulance.

“Don’t sulk. We haven’t time for sulking. Please?” he uttered tenderly instead of rising to the challenge of my bait. It made me resent him even more. How could he remain so composed while our world was dismantling around us?

“As you wish,” I groaned, and he nuzzled in my neck, disarming me with caresses on my stomach and chest, guiding me onto my back and tucking into my side. I raised a hand and fingered the spot where his locket used to hang. “You haven’t been wearing it. Why?”

He picked up my hand and kissed the knuckles of each finger.

“Do you ever feel like people view you as just an extension of your father?”

“All the time.”

“I thought perhaps not having a reminder literally hanging around my neck would help, but…” He trailed off, his gaze wandering over to the open window. “It just makes me feel guilty. It’s supposed to be a reminder of love, not obligation. I don’t know when that changed.”

I pulled him on top of me, kissing him fiercely, trying to chase away his misgivings.

“I don’t think they always know they do it,” I said as the kiss broke, our foreheads leaning together.

“How’d you get to be so wise?”

I snorted.

“It comes in spurts… I’m a bloody fucking wreck most of the time. You know that.”

“That’s just the hormones flooding your system.” He traced one long line down the center of my chest. “It’ll sort itself out in a few years.”

“Are _you_ sorted out?”

He smiled and cradled my face in his hands, kissed the bridge of my nose.

“That’s the fifty point question, isn’t it?”

“That blue Oxford shirt? The one you were wearing when you first came to the house?”

“Yes?” His forehead creased a bit, smoothing out as he realized which one I meant. “What about it?”

“Can I have it when you leave?”

“Of course.” He ran his fingers through my hair and smiled warmly.

“Will you wear it all day tomorrow? I want it to smell like you.”

“Anything your heart desires, Draco.”

 

***

 

We were drunk, running through the streets of Bergamo hand in hand, all the foreboding of tomorrow pushed aside with alcohol and kisses stolen at every opportunity. Harry kept pulling me under archways and down deserted, cobblestone-lined alleys all night, kissing me senseless.

I drank from his mouth like I was searching for something, trying to delve deeper than ever before and exhume some treasured object that would change it all, would make it so tomorrow never came.

He had me pressed against a brick wall, his hips grinding against mine, his hands tugging on my hair. My shoulder blades scraped against the brick, and I hoped there would be scratches on my skin for days to come, an angry red crisscross of lines that I could stroke as I gazed into the mirror, feeling some distant echo of his hands on me.

Abruptly, he pulled away, and I clutched at him, trying to reel him back in. He held a finger up with a slurred _shhhhhhh_.

“Do you hear that?”

I shook my head, confused and dizzy with drink and lust.

“Come on!” He grabbed my hand and began to run, and I whined as I lazily followed him. My drunken limbs felt heavy and unwieldy. I didn’t want to move. I wanted to stay pinned between him and the wall.

As we ran, I began to hear what he had been babbling about. The strains of “Enjoy the Silence,” that song I had watched him dance to so many weeks ago, grew louder, the lyrics coming into focus. I yanked on his arm to get him to stop running, and he jolted back, almost losing his balance.

“Stop! I don’t want to chase you anymore. I just want — ” My lower lip began to quake, and I felt the sting of tears gathering on my lashes. Everything was too much, the alcohol coursing through my blood, the streets of Bergamo spinning at the edges of my vision, the knowledge that it would all be gone, gone, gone this time tomorrow, intoxication no longer staving off my dejection.

There was a roiling in my stomach, a sensation like my insides were twisting and turning, braiding together in painful strands, and I didn’t know it if was the alcohol or the sickly truth that was digging into me like the talons of a Hippogriff. I doubled over, clutching my midsection, and Harry whipped around to face me.

“Draco, are you — ”

Without warning, I vomited on the street, relief washing over me as the nausea subsided. I panted, my relief replaced by embarrassment as I looked up at him. I wanted to apologize profusely for making a scene, even though no one appeared to be around to see it. I looked down, and heaved a sigh when I saw that none of it had landed on my shirt, the street the sole recipient of my mess. 

“Come here, love.” Harry grabbed my arm and walked me over to a nearby fountain. I bent over it, splashing water on my face and swishing some in my mouth, turning my head to spit it out on the street. I laughed, a bit of a deranged sound, as I imagined what my mother would say if she could see me now.

We sat on the edge of the fountain, and Harry rubbed my back until I calmed down.

“Do you remember when you danced to that song?” I asked, resting my head on his shoulder. “You kissed her… I couldn’t take my eyes off you.”

“I was such a fool, Draco. I’m sorry. I should have — ”

“No, I-I didn’t tell you… I couldn’t… I didn’t even want to tell myself,” I whispered, feeling like a pathetic, trite person. I had been reduced to one of those rambling, emotional college kids, crouched outside of a party with a friend, confessions spilling as the alcohol ushered them out.

“We’re both very bad at this whole ‘not dwelling on the what if’ thing, aren’t we?” He laughed and kissed the top of my head, and I lifted my chin to kiss him.

“Oh Harry… we’re both bad at a lot of things. I think maybe that’s why we like each other.”

“You brilliant boy… what am I going to do without you?”

He beamed at me, sealing our mouths before I could say _what if we never had to find out?_

 

***

 

The whistle of the train made us both jump, the sound more like a death knell than an arrival. It roared down the tracks and pulled into the station.

“Surprised you’re deigning to do this. No Portkey?”

“Maybe you’ve inspired me to try more new things.” He turned to face me, carding his fingers through my hair for what I knew would be the last time. People were exiting the train, the bustle of bodies jockeying for position, coming, going, trading, switching, all around us, but I could barely register it. Everything was a haze of manic noise and color, too fast and too slow all at once. I couldn’t focus on anything but his eyes.

People began to board the train, and the voice over the intercom announced that it would be departing in five minutes. His eyes grew panicked, and I felt my own gaze mirroring that, unable to guard against the tide of emotion tugging me beneath the surf. He hugged me close, and I nosed in his neck, breathing in the unmistakable musk of him.

As he pulled back, neither of us spoke. We simply gazed at one another for a long moment. He leaned in and planted a kiss on my lips, all too brief and all too significant, and turned to go, his hand lingering on mine until the very last second. He picked up his suitcase and stepped onto the train.

He took a window seat, smiling ruefully as the train pulled away, wheels chugging along the tracks so quickly. He was gone from my sight in mere seconds.

I watched the train recede into the distance, shiny black and red exterior swallowed by tall trees and blue skies. I exhaled, the force of it burning my lungs, and sat down defeatedly on the bench on the platform, cursing the sun for being so blindingly bright and cheery. I tugged at the rolled up cuffs of his Oxford shirt, hanging large and awkward on my lanky frame. Turning my nose into the crook of my elbow, I inhaled. His scent lingered on the fabric, but it had also mingled with mine to create something that contrasted and complemented all at once. It was bitter and earthy, but saccharine and floral. Dark and light. Subtle but overpowering.

I couldn’t catch my breath. Every inhale snagged as though caught on a nail, pulled down before I could drag it back up, the air too shallow and weak. I staggered to the payphone, that old relic of technologies past that seemed to define little European towns like this, nothing ever torn down even if it became obsolete. I knew it would stand there for years to come, until it rusted and crumbled.

I dialed our number, my heart sinking when Mafalda answered.

“Can you get Mum for me, please?” I asked, trying to steady my words.

I wondered if she noticed the labored cadence of my voice, excusing herself quickly as she put the phone down.

“Darling? What is it?” My disquiet abated ever so slightly at the soothing sound of my mother’s voice.

“C-can you come get me? I’m… I’m in Clusone, at the station.”

“Oh, is Harry gone?” she asked, a cautious tinge to her words.

“Y-yes, he’s…” I started to cry, and the harder I tried to stop the tears, the worse I sounded, my words broken by ragged sobs. “He’s gone now, Mum… He’s gone, and I just… can you come get me? I _need_ you to come get me. I can’t — ”

“Of course, of course, mio piccino. I’ll come at once. Be strong, darling. I’ll see you very soon, okay?”

“Okay…” I nodded and hung up, pressing my heated cheek to the glass of the phone booth. I stared down the endless tracks leading into the abyss and wondered how far away Harry was.


	8. Chapter 8

Although I knew she’d heard me crying over the phone, I still lamented breaking down in front of my mother in the car. I alternated between staring straight ahead and out the window, unable to meet her gaze and see the note of understanding in those blue eyes.

My mother stroked my cheek, petted my hair, wiped away my tears, but never said anything. I was crumpling like delicate paper in the squeeze of a fist, everything rough and creased and ugly, but I couldn’t stop. Without Harry there, there was no reason to delay my disintegration, no motivation for pretending to be whole.

I was grateful for her silence, the space she gave me to mourn as we drove down sunny country roads, the beauty of Italy no dimmer in the light of my despair.

 

***

 

“I’m so sorry, Draco. I have to pick up a couple of things. This won’t take but a minute, and then we’ll be on our way home, darling. Okay?” She smiled sweetly as her fingers grazed my cheek, and then she got out of the car. I nodded jerkily, wiping my tears with the sleeve of his shirt. It seemed so appropriate, my tears soaking the fabric, entwining with the threads of his sweat from the previous day. There was marginal comfort in knowing that we continued to be linked in new ways, even as he traveled further and further away from me.

“Ciao!”

I started, surprised by Pansy’s presence as she strode up to the car.

“Are you okay?” she asked quietly, leaning against the open window.

“Fine. Lovely,” I said curtly, my sniffles and bloodshot eyes betraying me.

“I heard he was leaving after your trip together. Since you’re back, I’m assuming…”

“Gossipy buggers in this town.”

She laughed, and my pain subsided for a fleeting second, my lips forming a weak smile.

“Well, what do you expect? With nothing to do but swim and drink and wait for summer to end, a handsome stranger is bound to pique the interest of all us poor sods.”

I looked down at my lap, curling the edge of his shirt in my fingers, watching the cloth bunch and release in my hand.

“You loved him, didn’t you?” It wasn’t really a question.

I heard the sounds of Maria and Alessandro excitedly chatting at the outdoor tables of a cafe not far away, birds calling to one another from perches I couldn’t see.

Life marched on.

I didn’t answer.

“I’ll forgive you just this once,” she declared with a playful smirk and a raised eyebrow. “We all behave like terribly inconsiderate fools when we’re in love.”

I motioned for her to step away from the window, my fingers on the door handle. As soon I stepped out, I hugged her tightly.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“We’ve been friends since we were eating dirt and spitting up on our jumpers. Didn’t think you could shake me that easily, did you?”

“I most certainly never ate dirt. That was _you_. Even as an infant, I was far too intelligent to mistake soil for food.”

“You keep telling yourself that, Draco,” Pansy said as we separated. Her eyes turned somber. “I’m sorry he left. I hope you’ll… talk to me about it sometime?”

I nodded and hugged her again. The table where Harry sat the first time I took him to Crema, brashly flicking his wand out of his backpack as though secrecy was a thing best left behind, was just a few yards beyond us.

 

***

 

I leaned against the doorway of Father’s study, not entering the room yet, desperate to speak with him but unsure if I had the courage.

_To speak or to die._

“Welcome home,” he said, placing his book and tumbler of whiskey on the end table next to the couch. “Did Harry enjoy the trip?”

“I think so,” I said with a brief smile, my hands in my pockets. I slowly walked toward him, taking a seat at the other end of the couch.

“You two had a wonderful friendship,” he said softly. I could feel his eyes on me, but I didn’t meet them, fiddling with my hands in my lap. The room was so still and quiet. No wind blowing in through the entryway, no rain beating on the windowpanes. “You’re too smart not to understand what a special and rare thing you two had.”

“I think he was better than me,” I whispered, moving closer.

“I believe he would say the same about you, which flatters you both.”

I let out a sad, muted laugh and finally looked at him, the love and care in his gaze unbearable. He smiled, the faint lines around his eyes creasing. They’d grown deeper in the last few years, but it only seemed to accentuate how striking he was, giving his face character.

“I knew he would be good for you. You’ve always been so afraid of the world, Draco. It’s like you’re holding your breath, waiting for everything to hurt you. You have a beautiful mind, but sometimes I think it traps you within its walls, making it hard for you to see anything outside of it. I want you to live; I don’t want you to be afraid. Perhaps I’ve sheltered you too much from magic. Maybe by seeking to protect you, I was limiting you. There’s an uncontrollable, wild element to the magical world that can be unpredictable and perilous, yes, but the other side of it can be wondrous and freeing. It can _open_ doors. It doesn’t have to close them for you like it did for me.” He placed a warm hand on my shoulder.

“No no, you’ve given me everything. I understand why you left that world. I’m not angry with you about it. It’s not that I’m afraid, I just... everything is so _much_ sometimes. How do you cope when even the beautiful things hurt so damn much to look at?” My voice broke, and I felt the telltale constriction in my chest, the heat spreading through my face as tears began to gather behind my eyes.

He paused, taking a thoughtful sip of whiskey before setting the glass back down, turning to me with a resolute expression. I recognized that look. I knew he’d considered what he was about to say long before I stepped foot in his study. He was a careful, concise man. He didn’t waste his words. As he angled his body toward mine, I sat up straighter.

“You know I would never force you to confide in me if you didn’t want to. I’ve always made certain that you knew your privacy was something to be valued, something precious that is to be protected. It’s something you are _owed_ , not something you _earn_. My father never allowed me space to be anything other than what he deemed acceptable, and I suffered greatly for it. Our relationship suffered for it. I didn’t want to make the same mistakes with you.”

“I know.”

He gazed back at me for a moment before nodding.

“That said, I fear sometimes that… by not pushing you…” He leaned back with a weary sigh, and I couldn’t guess what was troubling him. “Perhaps I have made myself seem less approachable than I would have liked. Maybe, in too much abundance, freedom can be the enemy. In these last couple of years, perhaps I needed to be the one to make the first move instead of waiting for you to come to me. I fear I have left you unmoored, floating at sea with no life raft to grasp.”

“No, I… I don’t want you to feel like that,” I hurried to respond. This was what I had feared: making him believe he had failed me when he’d done anything but.

“Draco, assuaging me is not your responsibility. That’s what I’m here to do for _you_. If I come up short, if I disappoint you in some way, I don’t want you to worry that, by telling me so, you’re betraying me or causing me pain. That was what it was like for me and your grandfather. I don’t want that for us. I never want our communication to be fraught with barriers. Do you understand?” He reached over and clasped my hand in his, and I nodded, the burden on my heart lifting.

“Your empathy is vast. You absorb _so_ much. You’ve always been able to see inside of people, even when they don’t want you to. _Especially_ when they don’t want you to. That makes you a danger to the frauds of this world. They don’t like being unmasked, but I hope you’ll never let that stop you. The world needs people like you.”

My breath hitched, his words reminding me of Harry, of the way he’d so readily told me how much he liked me, how much he cherished the things about myself that I despised. I wished so deeply that I could find a Time Turner and relive all those moments again, accepting his praise this time, smiling instead of frowning, thanking him instead of uttering a surly dismissal.

“Right now there is… sorrow. Pain. Don’t kill it, and along with it… the joy you felt. I know that everything weighs heavily on your heart. I know that you were born too perceptive and sympathetic for this world. I know this.” He squeezed my hand and tilted his head to meet my eyes, silver looking back into pewter. So alike and yet so distinct, the small flecks of my mother’s blue visible around the rings of my irises if one looked close enough, the shape of my eyes ever so slightly different from his. “But to make yourself feel _nothing_ … so as not to feel anything? What a waste. You may still not choose to speak to me about these things, but I would be a failure of a father if I didn’t make sure you knew that my door is always open. I am _never_ closed to you. Never.”

I nodded, my hand gripping his so tightly, I was certain it must be hurting him, but he didn’t pull away. The tears began to roll down my cheeks, silent but plentiful.

“You had a beautiful friendship. _More_ than a friendship, yes?”

I averted my eyes but nodded.

“Have I spoken out of turn?” he softly asked, and I shook my head.

“Does Mother know?” I whispered, lifting my eyes. He gave me a long, considerate look. I could tell he was weighing out the impact of his answer, taking care with me, only doling out as much as he thought I could handle.

“I don’t think she does.”

“You’re a terrible liar.”

“And you’re too smart for your own good,” he chuckled, giving my hand another squeeze.

“I… I think I may have fallen in love with him,” I confessed, the words rolling like water on my tongue, flowing with an ease that took me by surprise. The words had been whirring in the back of my mind for days, but the thought of surrendering them to speech was too daunting. I worried that admitting them would make the pain that much sharper.

“My little dragon,” Father smiled poignantly and pushed my hair back from my forehead, “there is no _may_ about it. Celebrate what you felt, what you still feel. I assure you that there’s no reason not to trust the truth of it.”

I leaned my head against his shoulder, settling into his embrace as he wrapped his arms around me.

 

***

 

_Somewhere in Northern Italy, A few days before Christmas, 2003_

I walked past the study and saw my parents standing over the big wooden desk, manila folders stuffed with resumes, photos, and portfolios splayed across the surface. It was the annual hunt, the beginning of the selection for next year’s candidate. I hurried past, not wishing to dwell on the connotation of it. What had been an unremarkable yearly ritual was now a reminder of the absence of him.

The fall term had kept me plenty busy. The grueling schedule of practice, music theory and mandatory attendance of concerts both within the school and in the city of Paris itself had given me the demanding distraction I had hoped for. In spite of the competitive streak running through much of the student body, I made friends. We shared cigarettes and mugs of red wine on balconies and patios as we drunkenly launched into concertos and arias at two in the morning, pounding on the keys and singing until the neighbors made us stop.

Still, it wasn’t enough. When I turned out the lights in my Paris flat, settling into the quiet darkness of my bedroom, the shock of being on my own a sensation that oscillated between exhilarating and lonely, I thought of him. When Marcel, the boy with the bright blue eyes and mahogany skin, smiled at me and pressed me against the corner of Alicia’s couch, his lips sliding against mine, tasting of whiskey and Gauloises, I thought of him.

“Draco?”

From my position in the armchair in the living room, legs slung over one side, I heard my mother calling my name.

“Yes?”

“It’s Harry. He’s on the phone, darling. Pick up the one out in the hall, and we’ll hang up.”

My heart skipped a beat. With the exception of a postcard thanking us and informing us of his safe return to England, we hadn’t heard from him. I had reread the lines of the card a hundred times, looking for some clue as to what he was thinking, some coded message meant only for me, but I’d found nothing in the perfunctory formality of it.

I walked to the phone as if my body were programmed to do so, my limbs heading to the destination before my brain could make a decision.

“Hello?” I said as I picked up the receiver, my heart beating a syncopated rhythm against the wall of my chest.

“Wonderful catching up with you, Harry. We’ll talk to you soon, yes?” my father said, the three of them exchanging goodbyes before my parents got off the line, leaving only the two of us.

The silence stretched between us, and I could hear his breath on the other end. Images came flooding back without my permission, and I squeezed my eyes shut to ward against them.

“Draco? Are you there?”

“I’m here,” I responded, my voice sounding faraway. “How are you?”

“Fine. Your parents seem well?”

“Yeah, they’re great… I miss you.”

“I miss you too… so very much.”

It was a statement that should have made me feel better, less alone, but something about his tone wasn’t comforting. There was a melancholy to it, like he regretted the fact that he missed me at all.

“I… have some news. I wasn’t sure if I should… fuck…”

“What is it? I don’t suppose you’re getting married, are you?” I said with a laugh, trying to lighten the mood. He paused again, and the buzz of the empty sound was deafening. With an abject horror, my mouth fell open. “You are… aren’t you?”

“I… might be. In the spring.”

“You never said anything,” I spat, not even sure what I meant. That he’d never said anything about there being anyone else? That he’d never told me what he was going to do when he left our little paradise and returned to England, an inevitability we were both so careful to never address? Or was it that I’d meant so much less to him than he’d meant to me?

“We’d been broken up for months by the time I came to Italy. I didn’t think — I don’t know, Draco… Gin and I have known each other since we were kids. We grew up together, and there’s always been this expectation that we would get married eventually, go from being unofficial to official family. It probably sounds like a hollow thing to you — ”

“You’re right. It does,” I cut him off, thoughts churning in my brain faster than I could organize them.

“Maybe when you’re older, you’ll understand what I mean. There’s so much pressure to do certain things, to _be_ who people think I’m meant to be — ”

“Fuck you. Don’t you dare condescend to me right now.” What happened to all the praise for how incisive I was? How I understood things. My fingers curled around the phone cord, the ridiculous rotary relic my parents refused to throw out, my hands grateful for its antiquity in that moment, coiling round and round my hands like a noose, my white flesh striping red from the impact, dashed lines like the mark of a flogger.

“I'm sorry. Draco, I’m so fucking sorry.” He heaved a sigh, and I hated that we were having this conversation over the phone. I needed to see him, needed to be able to peer into those unwavering gauges of green that always told me where I stood with him.

“What was I to you?” I choked out, the sob rattling in the back of my throat like a primal scream poised to spring forth.

“Everything, Draco… You were… everything I never knew I needed.”

“Then why are you marrying someone else?”

“Because I’m a coward, and because I don’t know what else to do.”

_I’ve never been good at knowing what I want. I’m at my best when people decide that for me._

_I know myself. I don’t want to hurt you._

It all began to click into place. All the ways he’d warned me. All the ways he’d told me this would end in ruin, and all the ways I’d viscerally known it all along too, alone and tortured in my room, afraid to even touch myself lest I erupt into fragments, convinced that wanting him was better than the risk of having him. Somehow, the months of separation hadn’t brought the clarity that this moment had.

“Draco…” I whispered, hoping that private moment would be the incantation to unlock the spell keeping us apart, a secret that only the two of us knew. “Dracodracodraco.”

“Harry,” he breathed, soft and sensual, the longing unmistakable. I hated the hope it gave me. “I remember… I remember _everything_ , love.”

“They know about us.” I didn’t know why I was telling him. Perhaps I thought it bold in the face of his weakness, a declaration that I wasn’t ashamed of us, that I hadn’t hidden it.

“I know… the way Lucius spoke to me just now… it was like I was already a son-in-law. Made me feel all the worse.”

“Good.”

“I know what I deserve, Draco… but I hope you’ll forgive me someday.”

I hung up the phone and ran to my room, taking the stairs two at a time, not heeding the calls of my parents. When I flung the door open, I wanted to burn the whole room. Even though months had passed, the room still seemed to bear his presence. No matter how many clothes or books I moved back onto the shelves and the dresser, the imprint of his palm was on every surface. The traces of his scent were on the pillows, lingering like the fine streaks of salt after ocean water has evaporated on glass, a hazy smear that I couldn’t wash away. I pulled the blue Oxford shirt from the wardrobe and lay it on the bed, puffing out the sleeves as though arms lay within them, straightening the shirttails to resemble the way they might hang down the front of his shorts. I lay on top of it, and curled the empty arms around me, my tears staining the fabric until I had nothing left.

 

***

 

_Spring, Paris, 2004_

I walked down rue des Ardennes, pain au chocolat and coffee in hand, my fingers and eyes tired from endless runs down the ivory keys. I’d bought the pastry and coffee from a stand in Parc de la Villette, taking a stroll to enjoy the fresh air before I headed back to my flat. It was always a necessary refresher for me, emerging from the musty auditorium into the open sunlight and balmy breeze of spring. It wasn’t that I didn’t love my work. I felt as at home on the piano bench as I always had, perfecting crescendos and trills until my joints cramped. It was an invigorating sort of fatigue, but I wasn’t immune to the need for a break now and then, a mental and physical reset to bring me back to the world that existed outside of the conservatory walls.

I ascended the stairs to the second floor, taking small bites of the pastry as I went. My flat wasn’t anything remarkable, but it had all the space I needed and a balcony for late night smoking and drinking, its walls not far from campus. I didn’t mind that it hung above a shop. In fact, it seemed appropriate to me. I remember finding it to be the city charm I’d always hoped for. I made so many memories, good, bad, and in between, in that first dingy flat of mine.

As I turned on the landing to my floor, I looked down, digging into my messenger bag for my keys, before I was interrupted by a voice I hadn’t heard in months.

“Draco.”

With a thud, my coffee cup dropped to the hard floor, the glug-glug of liquid rapidly spilling through the spout as my eyes lifted to meet his emerald gaze.

“What are you doing here?”

He bent down and set the cup upright, halting the spill, and looked back up at me shyly, his gaze flitting about the hallway.

“Can we maybe go somewhere and talk?”

“Tell me why you’re here.” I crossed my arms and waited. He shuffled from foot to foot, and it occurred to me that I’d never quite seen him like this. Harry, the man of long, confident strides and performative smiles, was looking at me sheepishly, the little boy who’d stolen a cookie before dinner and couldn’t look his mum in the eye.

“I couldn’t go through with it. I couldn’t do it, and when she told me she felt the same, it was such a relief that I just got on a fucking bus and I went to Oxford without even thinking I don’t know what I — your father told me where you were — he told me I should do this if I wanted to, and I didn’t even question it — I just went, and now I’m here and you’re — ” His speech was rapid, like he couldn’t push the words to fruition fast enough, and his eyes… those earnest eyes… telling me everything I needed to know, even when I didn’t want to know it.

“Come inside,” I said, striding forward to unlock the door a few feet behind him. I entered the flat, not turning around to see if he was following. He shut it behind him, the mechanic click of the lock a more jarring sound than usual. Without a word, I walked over to the couch and sat down. He remained standing for a moment, hands in the pockets of his jacket, a small satchel slung over one shoulder, before finally sitting down, careful to leave a cushion between us. He set the bag on the floor. “Am I right to presume you’re not getting married?”

“I couldn’t go through with it,” he repeated. “When I told Ginny, she… she said she’d been thinking the same thing. That she’d only suggested we get married out of panic, that she didn’t want anyone turning to her, asking for decisions on her life anymore, expecting her to have all the answers. She just wanted to _do_. Didn’t want to _think_ anymore. Hilarious, really.”

He laughed, a note of bitter sorrow in it.

“Maybe if we’d just properly talked to each other from the beginning, we could have saved everyone the trouble.”

“And your parents?” I had so many questions, I hardly knew where to begin. I was beginning to understand his manic speech out in the hall. I wanted to throw a barrage of words at him too.

“They weren’t happy at first, but then… when they heard what I had to say, they were mostly angry with me for not talking and angry with themselves for not asking. Why is being a person so complicated, Draco? Why can’t we just… be in the moment?” He turned toward me, and he was so beautiful, I wanted to cry. He was just the same as I’d remembered him, tawny skin, glittering eyes, hands big enough to cover my own. I was struck by how strongly I wanted to crawl into his lap, how I wanted to forget everything we had to discuss, ignore all the pragmatic things just for a chance to rekindle the spark that had eviscerated me from the inside out last summer.

“Why did you come here?” I shifted closer to him, barely conscious of the movement.

“Because… no matter what’s going on in my head, no matter how stuffed to the gills with confusion I’ve been, how hard I jerk in one direction when I’m being pulled in another… I… I’ve never been uncertain about you. I might have spent my life relying on people to tell me what I wanted, but I _never_ needed anyone to tell me that I wanted you.” He turned his body, his knees angled toward me now, our legs mere inches apart. I didn’t know how we’d gotten that close, how we’d gone from a safe distance to a dangerous one. “You look just as beautiful in the Paris spring as you do in the Italian summer. Oh, Draco… how I’ve thought about this…”

His eyes traveled up and down my face, his smile reaching the brilliant green of his eyes, and I had to tuck my hands underneath my thighs for fear I might reach out.

Something shifted in his face, his loving eyes growing frantic.

“I shouldn’t have come here. This isn’t fair to you — I — I’m such a selfish shit. I can’t come here, after all this time, and beg you to be with me just because I — ”  

“Because you what?” My heart thudded. All this time, seven odd months later, and my body still called out for him. He still set my mind on fire with just one look, and the possibility within it. I needed to hear it.

He chewed on his bottom lip, his fingers twitching as though he wanted to touch me. He looked away, and I thought for sure that would be it. He would leave, unable to give me the words I needed in order to believe I hadn’t imagined everything between us, and I would watch him go, unable to steel my resolve long enough to confront him with the truth.

_To speak or to die._

I sighed and moved to stand, but he reached out for me, his hand unbearably warm on my knee. I swallowed audibly, my gaze traveling up the length of his arm, to the curve of where his neck met his shoulder, the swathes of curls framing his ear, until I reached those eyes once again, wide and sincere behind his spectacles. We looked at one another, the two of us breathing hard, a strange, primal challenge in it, a sense that we could fight or melt together like drizzles of warm honey, inseparable and indistinguishable as I’d hoped we would be. Dracoharrydracoharry.

“Because I love you,” he said at last, the words somehow light and solemn all at once. “Because I love you so much, and for the longest time, I didn’t understand how that could be. How we could spend the summer together, and crash into one another so hard that it could sustain me through every fucked up moment in my head from then until now. Everything about this seems so impossible, but I can’t — I don’t want to spend another wasted second trying to convince myself that it _can’t_ be when you’re here in front of me, clear as day and real as anything I’ve ever known.”

I blinked hard, as if to dispel a dream, this hallucinatory vision I wasn’t sure I could trust. He was imparting these words that were so like my obsessive thoughts from that summer, the ardent prayers I feared to share with him lest he know just how truly mad I was.

“I love you too, Harry. You know I do.”

No sooner had I whispered my confession, bottled and stored for too many solitary months in my head, than he had descended upon me, claiming my mouth and my body, kissing the words from my lips and pressing me into the couch. I basked in that familiar sensation, his weight covering me so completely. I’d missed that most of all. He kissed my lips numb, his tongue tracing the shape of them, licking into my mouth like he was searching for a long forgotten taste, chasing every last drop of an endangered elixir.

When he effortlessly picked me up, his strong hands cupping my arse, I locked my legs around his waist and let him carry me to the bedroom.

 

***

 

“You’re using more magic. I can feel the charms running in the flat.”

“I’m no longer in my father’s house. The first thing I did is run temperature controlling charms. I’ll be damned if I’m going to sweat or shiver now that there’s no one around to tell me I have to.” I smiled, and he laughed, running his fingers through my hair, our naked bodies tangled in the sheets. We fell into silence, the gentle hum of traffic outside my open bedroom window.

“What happens now?” he eventually asked, palm running down the length of my arm. It was strange to have him turn to me for answers, but I liked it.

“You stay. I’ll play. You’ll write. We’ll cast the strongest privacy charms we know and make love on the balcony whenever we fancy.” I burrowed in the crook of his arm, my hands stroking his chest, running over the oval surface of his locket. He chuckled, and I felt the rumble through my body, gooseflesh rising to the surface of my skin.

“You make it sound so easy.”

“Isn’t it?”

“I don’t know that it is… I want it be… I want to _believe_ it can be.” His brow furrowed, his arm tightening around me.

“Does it really matter if it isn’t? What’s the worst that can happen? Would you rather we not try at all than try and fail?” I frowned, partly because I couldn’t believe how different I’d become without even noticing it. Strange how that happens, isn’t it? Change is altogether gradual, but altogether untraceable as well. It isn’t that we wake up one day and are entirely different; it only seems that way because we’re too busy to truly notice ourselves. Too fixated on our flaws, too frustrated with the petty injustices of daily life, too sour over perceived failures and potential fallouts that haven’t yet come to pass. We blink, and a year has come and gone, the person looking back at us no longer resembling what we thought we recognized only yesterday. The summer before, I would have never asserted such bold, devil-may-care platitudes, but so much had happened, within me and outside of me as well. I no longer felt compelled to languish my chances on the anxiety of what might go wrong.

“Is this what happens when you go six months without me? You become an incurable optimist?” He lifted my chin and smiled, kissing the corner of my mouth.

“Seven,” I corrected, kissing his neck. “By the way, what’s in that bag you brought?”

“Oh!” He jolted out of bed, and I groaned. “It’s my manuscript! I’ve been dying to show you.”

He bounded back in the room, and I laughed at how excited he was, his soft cock bouncing between his legs, the thick, bound pages resting between his hand and his naked hip. He held it out to me, and I accepted it.

_Out of the Shadows: Unearthing the History of Muggle-Wizarding Cooperation and the Sociological Benefits of Turning Our Hidden Past into a Hopeful Future_

I smiled, remembering the scribbled notes I’d found sandwiched in between the pages of that book I’d rifled through in his room.

“This wasn’t exactly what you were studying,” I said with a questioning eyebrow as I turned the page.

“No, it wasn’t, and I was swiftly kicked from the Ph.D program when I tried to defend my dissertation. Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter how riveting you find your subject, if it took two turns round the bend and ended up somewhere that deviates too far from the program, you can’t graduate said program.”

“I’m sorry.” I flashed him a smile of lamentation, but he only shrugged with a laugh.

“It’s all right. Who needs a room of stodgy old academics in tweed handing you a meaningless title? Thank Merlin for your father. He was the one who convinced me to go with my gut and publish this no matter what. I’m glad he did. I wrote this in a sort of fevered possession. I’ve never been that excited by my work before. It was well worth it. Even if they don’t think I’ll make a difference, I already feel like I did.”

I put the manuscript down and wrapped my arms around him.

“That’s amazing. I’m glad you did what you wanted. That you did it for yourself and no one else.”

When I pulled back, his mouth was drawn tight, his eyebrows angling together.

“What?”

“Draco, I just… I don’t want you to feel as if you’re settling for me. You have your whole life ahead of you, school… everything is just beginning… I don’t want to hold you back from experiencing everything the world has to offer you. You’re exceptional, and you should have everything you want.”

I shook my head. How could someone so intelligent miss the point entirely? How could he ever underestimate just what he gave me, simply by existing in my orbit?

“My spring recital is tomorrow. Why don’t you come?”

“All right,” he agreed with a small smile. I could see the cogs of his mind turning, trying to ascertain what I had meant by bulldozing past all of his concerned words. I didn’t say anything. I wanted him to decide for himself.

The night was still young, the sun just beginning to set. I pulled him down on top of me, spreading his legs until they locked me in, bracketing my slim thighs, his arms slipping between my shoulders and the bed.

 

***

 

“Ça va?”

“Oui, oui, ça va,” I nodded, my breath ragged, my hands clenching and unclenching at my sides.

Simone chuckled and kissed my cheek, her hand resting on my shoulder. The atmosphere backstage before a performance was always chaotic, the tension palpable as people shook and sweat, all of us anticipating our own flubs. Of course, our desperation would give way to adrenaline when we finally took to the stage, parting that thick velvet curtain to emerge from the wings, the lights bright and hot, our formal wear suddenly a touch too tight as we nodded at the applause with nervous smiles.

“You’ll be wonderful, Draco. You always are. Take a breath, yes?” Simone assured me, and I nodded with a forced smile. “Okay, it’s time, darling.”

I straightened my spine, squared my shoulders, and smoothed the crisp lapels of my tailored black jacket. I strode out onto the stage, taking a deep breath as I smiled at the clapping audience, their faces obscured by the lights, motes of dust lazily floating in the beams as I walked to the piano. As I took my seat at the bench, a hush fell over the room, the last few distant claps dying down. It was a moment I always relished, the pure quiet that precedes a room before a musician fills it with beautiful melodies, the audience holding their breath, respectful and waiting for the first note to drop.

I usually didn’t attempt to look at the audience in detail, to discern faces and expressions. It was difficult to do and only served to exacerbate my nerves, but that day I did it. I turned my head until the first few rows were in focus, scanning the seats until my eyes landed on him.

There he was. Front row. My mother and father were seated next to him, all of them smiling back at me. I locked eyes with Harry, and his grin widened. I could hear the restless movements of the crowd, the ripple of whispers that were beginning to overtake them as they wondered what was wrong with me, whether I’d succumbed to a nasty case of stage fright, but I paid them no mind.

We gazed at one another, and I thought of all the seductions, big and small, artful and floundering. Every song of persuasion and temptation we’d played for each other as we tried to guess at what the other was thinking during those six fateful weeks.

_I just played it the way Busoni would’ve played it if he’d altered Liszt’s version._

_Can’t you just play Bach’s version? What’s wrong with Bach?_

I smiled and turned back to the piano. I took a deep breath, the vacuum of silence consuming the room once again, and my hands descended on the keys. I didn’t need the sheet music. My fingers knew exactly where to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hearkening back to my notes on the first chapter, I hope André Aciman and Luca Guadagnino, whom I dearly love for bringing CMBYN to life, would see this as an homage in a similar way to Luca’s intentions to continue Elio and Oliver’s story in two more films, writing a new ending for our beloved tragic pair. All scene descriptions/paragraphs are my own, but some dialogue portions are direct quotes lifted from James Ivory’s script for the film. 
> 
> I was insatiably curious about how this story would play out when adapted to Draco and Harry and the elements of magic so I just went where that curiosity took me. It’s not my intention to steal content but rather to simply have fun with a creative writing exercise in re-imagining a story I love and will not profit from in any way.

**Author's Note:**

> This work is part of "Lights, Camera, Drarry" (LCDrarry), a film-, TV- and theatre-inspired Drarry fest.  
>  Creations are posted anonymously during the posting period. The creators will be revealed on [tumblr](http://lcdrarry.tumblr.com) and [AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/LCDrarry2019/works) on 15 June.


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